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 GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
 
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 ^USTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 
 AND CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN CHARLES TARVER 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 MDCCCXCV 
 
 'j<.kf
 
 DEDICATED 
 TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 T. H. M. S.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 My aim in the following pages has been to place the per- 
 sonality of Gustave Flaubert vividly before my readers. It 
 was through his letters, rather than through his works, that 
 I became interested in him, and my original intention was 
 to make a volume of translations of selected letters ; so that 
 others might be impressed in the same way as myself. I 
 found, however, that without continual references to his 
 works, not all of which are translated into English, his 
 letters would be unintelligible, and so gi*adually the book 
 assumed its present form. 
 
 I have done my best to avoid mere gossip about his 
 private life, holding with him that an artisfs privacy should 
 be respected ; and esteeming this to be, above all, a sound 
 maxim, when so many personal acquaintances are still alive, 
 as in the present case. Thus I did not look for facts which 
 have not already appeared in print. My chief authorities 
 are the author's own works and letters ; but I have made 
 use of the introduction written by Madame Commanville to 
 the first volume of her imcle's letters ; also of the critical 
 and personal notice written by Guy de Maupassant, and 
 printed with the volume of letters addressed to George 
 Sand. I am indebted to Madame Commanville for per- 
 mission to make use of these documents. She has been
 
 X LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 kind enough to read through the ms., and in every way to 
 help me. I have to thank her also for the illustrations. 
 
 In one case I have had to break my rule of making 
 Flaubert write his own story. I have made use of the 
 Souvenirs LUUraires of Maxime Ducamp ; in citing him I 
 have, except by inadvertence, used inverted commas. He 
 is not considered an unimpeachable authority by the family 
 of Flaubert. 
 
 Again, in the case of what with any other man would 
 have been most private and most sacred — his love-letters. 
 They seemed to me more illustrative of Flaubert's devotion 
 to literature than any other of his letters; to omit them 
 would have been to omit what is most striking in his cor- 
 respondence ; and as both they and Maxime Ducamp's 
 account of the lady to whom they were written had already 
 been published, it seemed to me that I ran no risk of being 
 charged with indiscretion in translating them, and citing 
 Maxime Ducamp, whose book had not been translated when 
 I wrote. 
 
 I append a list of the works of Flaubert. The volume 
 entitled Par les champs et par les greves, as also Bouvard 
 et Pecuchet, were published after the author''s death ; and 
 any defects in them may be attributed to the want of his 
 revision. 
 
 In translating I have found a special difficulty with the 
 words ' bourgeois' and ' bete.' They are much in Flaubert's 
 mouth ; the former was to him in literature, art, and morality 
 what a ' snob ' was to Thackeray ; the latter is something 
 different from our ' stupid ' : ' betise ' is often noisy, pushing, 
 self-confident, superfluously energetic : as a rule, I have
 
 PREFACE xi 
 
 found ' inane ' and ' inanity ' come nearest to the idea in- 
 tended to be conveyed ; but I despair of having always 
 reproduced Flauberfs indignation. 
 
 I am afraid numerous Gallicisms still remain in spite of 
 careful elimination, especially in the order of the words. I 
 crave the indulgence of readers for these and other defects ; 
 by becoming habituated to another language a translator 
 ceases to be duly sensitive to the smaller points in which it 
 differs from his own. 
 
 In addition to Madame Commanville, I owe much grati- 
 tude to her friend, Mademoiselle Marechal, who helped at an 
 early stage of the work to keep me clear of errors. 
 
 The book is dedicated to the memory of one friend ; it 
 owes its existence to the ever-helpful and active sympathy 
 of another. 
 
 J. C. TARVER. 
 
 LIST OF FLAUBERT'S WORKS. 
 
 Madame Bovary. 
 Salammbo. 
 
 L' Education Sentimentale. 
 La Tentation de Saint Antoine. 
 
 Trois Contes. (Un Coeur simple, Saint Julian THospitalier, 
 Herodias.) 
 *Bouvard et Pecuchet. 
 *Par les champs et par les graves. 
 *Lettres a George Sand, avec une etude par Guy de 
 
 Maupassant. 
 *Correspondance. Tomes i., ii., in., iv. 
 Le Candidal. Comedie en quatre actes. 
 
 * These were published after the author's death.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE, .... XV 
 
 I. CHILDHOOD SCHOOL DAYS LETTERS TO ERNEST 
 
 CHEVALIER ..... I 
 
 II. THE LAW STUDENT CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIS 
 
 SISTER, . . . .19 
 
 HI. ILLNESS MAXIME DUCAMP, ... 32 
 
 IV. CROISSET DEATH THE MIDDLE-CLASS PERSON, . 37 
 
 V. LOVE — LOUIS BOUILHET PARODY, . . 46 
 
 VI. THE PATH OF LOVE NOT SMOOTH LETTER TO 
 
 MRS. TENNANT, .... 59 
 
 VII. TOUR IN BRITTANY — STYLE, ... 69 
 
 VIII. THE DEATH OF ALFRED LE POITTEVIN, . . 79 
 
 IX. THE 'ST. ANTHONY,' . . . .82 
 
 X. THE EAST, ..... lOI 
 
 XI. LIFE AT CROISSET — MADAME LOUISE COLET, . 122 
 
 XII. 'MADAME BOVARY,' . . . . 156 
 
 XIII. THE MAKING OF ' MADAME BOVARY ' THE PROSE- 
 
 CUTION, . . . . .196 
 
 XIV. ' SALAMMBO,' ..... 202 
 
 XV. THE ' EDUCATION SENTIMENTALE ' LETTERS TO 
 
 TWO LADIES RELIGION, . . . 220 
 
 xiii
 
 xiv CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 xvi. death of louis bouilhet his artistic ideals 
 
 — Flaubert's letter to the town council 
 
 OF ROUEN, ..... 238 
 
 XVII. THE ' EDUCATION SENTIMENTALE ' THE FRANCO- 
 PRUSSIAN WAR LETTERS TO GEORGE SAND 
 
 DEATH OF HIS MOTHER, . . . 25I 
 
 XVIII. THE THREE SHORT STORIES ST. JULIAN THE 
 
 HOSPITABLE, ..... 269 
 
 XIX. LETTERS TO GEORGE SAND — HER DEATH, . . 281 
 
 XX. LETTERS TO GUV DE MAUPASSANT AND OTHERS, . 29O 
 
 XXI. ' BOUVARD ET PECUCHET,' . . 3OI 
 
 INDEX, ...... 359
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
 
 The man whose life forms the subject of the following volume 
 was a man to whom truth seemed the most sacred of all obliga- 
 tions. To attempt to portray his life and not to indicate wherein 
 and why the portrait might be judged to deviate from the 
 strictest rectitude in the matter of truth, would be to dishonour 
 the memory of the man himself, to assume that he would be 
 content to sail under colours that were not his own, that he 
 would disavow his own personality in order to gain the popular 
 favour. 
 
 In transferring the personality of any man from one nationality 
 to another, we are at once encountered with a difficulty. It is 
 possible by too strict a fidelity to mere letters to give a dishonest 
 portrait. What is indecent in England is venial in France ; 
 on the other hand, France classes with improprieties many 
 features in the ordinary commerce of English society. There 
 are those Englishmen who look to France to supply them with 
 unclean details, which they believe themselves to be unable to 
 enjoy in the literature of their own country — to whom Zola is 
 ' hot,' Daudet ' warm.' To place Flaubert anywhere within the 
 range of this sort of appreciation would be to misrepresent him. 
 
 Further, in dealing with his correspondence one fact has 
 always to be remembered : that of the four volumes of letters 
 which have been published, no single letter was written by Flaubert 
 with the idea that it would or could at any time appear in print. 
 
 There are many of us who write letters, who tell stories in 
 private, whose publication would be an outrage on public 
 decency. There is one rule for the conversation of the 
 smoking-room, another for dinner and dessert, yet another for 
 the magazine article. Freedom of language, and violence of 
 expression, permissible in private correspondence with a very 
 intimate friend, would be justly stigmatised as Hbellous or coarse
 
 xvi LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 in works intended for publication. Therefore, while enough has 
 been shown of the earlier letters to indicate the impetuous 
 imagination of the youth afire with great thoughts, to whom the 
 ordinary rules of conventional society were less than the stubble 
 which we tread in September, the present editor has done his 
 best throughout to eliminate everything that, by reason only of 
 the variations of usage on the two sides of the Channel, on the 
 one hand, and the conditions under which the letters were origin- 
 ally written, on the other, might incline the English reader to 
 avert his gaze, and miss the opportunity of enjoying the society 
 of one of the best and noblest men of the nineteenth century.
 
 The House at Croisset.
 
 LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 CHILDHOOD SCHOOL DAYS LETTERS TO ERKEST CHEVALIER 
 
 On the first of January 1831, a little boy living at Les 
 Andelys, some twenty miles east of Rouen, received the 
 following letter from another little boy : 
 
 ' Dear Friend, — You are right in saying that New Year's 
 day is a stupid thing. My friend they have just sent the grey- 
 haired La Fayette the bravest of the brave, the liberty of the 
 two worlds. Friend, I will send you some of my political, 
 constitutional liberal speeches, you are right to say you will 
 make me happy by coming to Rouen, it will please me very 
 much, I wish you a happy New Year for 1831. Kiss your 
 good family for me with all your heart. 
 
 ' The playmate that you have sent me has the air of being a 
 good fellow, although I have only seen him once. 
 
 * I will also send you some of my comedies. If you wish us 
 to join writing, I will write comedy, and you shall write your 
 dreams, and as there is a lady who comes to our house, and 
 who always talks silly things to us, I will write them. I am 
 not writing well because I have a box from Nogent to receive. 
 Goodbye, reply to me as soon as possible. 
 
 ' Good bye, good health, your friend alway. 
 
 Reply to me as soon as possible I pray.' 
 
 Thus with the hazardous punctuation, and (in the original) 
 with the doubtful orthography of extreme youth, at the age
 
 2 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 of nine and three weeks, Gustave Flaubert wrote his first 
 letter to a friend. 
 
 Thirty-four years later his last published letter to the 
 same friend has the following passage : — 
 
 * I do not accept your affectionate rebukes, my dear Ernest, 
 although they have moved me to the bottom of my soul. It 
 is in vain that we see one another only at distant intervals and 
 for a short time, I think of you very often, be sure of that, and 
 I miss you, my dear old man ! As we grow older, as the home 
 becomes dispeopled, we are carried back to the old days, to 
 the times of our youth. You have been too much mixed up 
 with mine, you have for a long time played too large a part in 
 my life for coldness or forgetfulness ever to arise on my side. 
 I never go to my brother's house at Rouen without looking at 
 the dwelling of old Father Mignot, of which I still recollect 
 the whole interior, even to the front of the chimney piece; 
 Henry iv. with the fair Gabrielle, a neighing horse, etc. etc. 
 When Easter comes round, I think of my visits to les Andelys, 
 when we used to smoke pipe after pipe in the ruins of Chateau- 
 Gaillard, and your poor father used to pour us out wine from 
 Collioures, and carve us Amiens pies, laughing all the while so 
 heartily at the absurdities I used to say. The other day I 
 went to the College to see a small boy who had been com- 
 mended to my notice by friends at Paris; the whole of my 
 school life came back to my memory.' 
 
 By the time that this letter was written, the friends had 
 wandered far apart ; Ernest Chevalier had followed the 
 ordmary routine of a capable jurisconsult, and occupied one 
 legal position after another in the French Magistracy ; 
 Gustave Flaubert had remained faithful to his first love, 
 continued to busy himself with comedies and tragedies, and 
 to record the absurdities with which his path through life 
 was beset. 
 
 Ernest Chevalier was a successful man ; he accomplished 
 what his friends expected of him ; he rose in his profession,
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 3 
 
 he married, he was successful ; and he will be remembered 
 because of the little boy who used to write to him in the 
 holidays. 
 
 Gustave Flaubert was the son of Achille Cleophas 
 Flaubert, surgeon-in-chief of the infirmary at Rouen, a man 
 whose comparatively early death at the age of sixty-one was 
 regarded as a public calamity in the town in which he had 
 pursued his profession with the single-hearted devotion of 
 an artist, and the large-mindedness of a man of genius. 
 Though he was never permitted to accomplish the scientific 
 task which he had proposed to himself, and to give the 
 world the benefit of the carefully kept notes of his profes- 
 sional career, he was kno\vn beyond Rouen ; and his son was 
 more than once gratified by finding that his own name was 
 familiar to men in distant places through the reputation of 
 his father. ' Pere Flaubert,"* as he was commonly called at 
 Rouen, was the son of a veterinary surgeon at Nogent-sur- 
 Seine, and belonged thus to the province of Champagne, 
 whose inhabitants are credited with a strain of chivalry and 
 impetuosity foreign to the more cautious and cold nature 
 of the Normans among whom he spent his maturity, and 
 from whom he chose his wife. He is thus described by his 
 son in Madame Bovary : — 
 
 ' Canivet was on the point of administering theriacum, when 
 the crack of a whip was heard in the distance ; all the windows 
 rattled, and a postchaise drawn by three horses at full gallop, 
 splashed up to the ears, turned the corner of the mai'ket in one 
 stride. It was Doctor Lariviere. 
 
 '^The apparition of a god would not have caused a greater 
 disturbance. Bovary raised his hands, Canivet stopped short, 
 and Homais pulled off his cap even before the doctor 
 entered. 
 
 ' He belonged to the great surgical school, which sprang from 
 the dissecting table of Bichat, to that now lost generation of
 
 4 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 practical philosophers, who cherishing their art with a fanatical 
 love, practised it with elevation and sagacity. Every one 
 trembled in his hospital when he was out of temper, and his 
 students respected him so much, that they struggled to imitate 
 him to the best of their ability, even as soon as they were 
 started in life ; so it came to pass that in all the towns in the 
 neighbourhood there were recognised on their persons, his long 
 merino comforter, and his full black coat, whose unbuttoned 
 cuffs to some degree covered his muscular hands: very beautiful 
 hands, that never wore gloves, as if to be more ready to dash 
 in to the aid of suffering. Contemptuous of decorations, of 
 honours, of Societies, hospitable, liberal, paternal to the poor, 
 and practising virtue without believing in it, he would almost 
 have passed for a saint, had not the sharpness of his wit made 
 him terrible as a fiend. His look, more cutting than his 
 instruments, went straight down into a man's soul, and through 
 misstatements and modest reservations laid every lie bare ; 
 and thus he moved with that easy majesty, which is given by 
 the consciousness of a mighty talent, of wealth, and of forty 
 years of an industrious and irreproachable existence. 
 
 ' At the door perceiving the cadaverous countenance of Emma 
 stretched on her back, her mouth open, he knitted his brows. 
 Then while appearing to listen to Canivet, he passed his fore- 
 finger under his nose and kept repeating : — 
 
 ' Good — good — 
 
 ' But he made a slight movement with his shoulders. Bovary 
 noticed it : they looked at one another ; and this man, accus- 
 tomed as he was to the sight of sorrow, could not hold back a 
 tear, which fell upon his shirt-frill.' 
 
 In this masterly fashion does the son draw the portrait of 
 the father, by whom he himself was never understood. 
 
 On the mother*'s side, too, Gustave Flaubert was descended 
 from a physician ; her father had been a country doctor, 
 who married a Mademoiselle Cambremer, to the great 
 scandal of the noble families of Lower Normandy with which 
 she was related. She was a woman to whom it fell to bear 
 something more than the ordinary burden of sorrow, and
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 5 
 
 she played her part with dignity and resignation. She was 
 a devoted mother. 
 
 The Flaubert family consisted of the father and mother, 
 the eldest son, Achille, who afterwards succeeded his father 
 in the Infirmary at Rouen, Gustave, nine years younger, and 
 a daughter, Caroline, three years younger still. These two 
 last children were distinguished by remarkable personal 
 beauty — a royal personage once stopped to notice Gustave 
 in the street — splendid alike in colouring and form, they 
 unconsciously attracted the homage which is ever rendered 
 to comeliness of person. 
 
 Up to the age of nine Gustavus had not learned to read ; 
 while his sister easily acquired the art, he remained confused 
 and stupefied in the presence of the mysterious forms of 
 letters. Meanwhile, his mind was not inactive : on the one 
 hand, he was attended by a veritable jewel of a nurse, 
 descended from a notable family of postilions located in a 
 country rich in folklore and semi-historical traditions, and 
 who had supplemented her orally acquired knowledge by a 
 somewhat extensive course of reading during a tedious and 
 disabling illness ; and on the other hand, opposite the 
 Infirmary, lived the Pere Mignot — a mine of tales of all 
 sorts, and who was ever willing to spend long hours reading 
 Don Quixote to the handsome dreamy son of his neighbour, 
 the loved, the respected, the dreaded Pere Flaubert. 
 
 Thus the small boy early acquired the habit of listening, 
 and of listening with discrimination, though in all the 
 practical concerns of life he was of a simplicity almost 
 incomprehensible. The same child who could perceive the 
 absurdities of the conversation of his father's friends, and 
 propose at the age of nine to turn them to literary uses, was 
 easily taken in by the simplest trick. ' Go and see if I am 
 in the kitchen,"* an old servant would say, who found his 
 
 1^
 
 6 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 company inconvenient ; and the cliild would gravely march 
 to the kitchen and repeat, to the mystification of the cook, 
 ' Peter sent me to see if he is here/ 
 
 It used to be, and still is to some extent, the custom in 
 France to send the sons of well-to-do parents to boarding- 
 schools, which are often situated in the towns in which the 
 parents reside. On Thursday afternoons, and from Saturday 
 to Monday morning, the boys returned to their parents ; 
 otherwise they lived in the cloistered seclusion of the college, 
 subject to a discipline inflexible and military in its nature, 
 performing regular exercise at regular hours, solemnly 
 marching from class-room to class-room, watched both during 
 lessons and the short periods of recreation by an inferior class 
 of ushers, who had nothing to do with teaching beyond main- 
 taining order during the lessons of the professors. This 
 system, by rendering morality a mere question of discipline, 
 enforced by a despised, and not unfrequently contemptible 
 spy, almost necessarily alienated the sympathy of all noble- 
 minded boys. To it young Gustave was submitted a little 
 before he was nine years old, having rapidly, in the presence 
 of necessity, surmounted the reading difficulty, and for nearly 
 ten years he remained under its, to him, unbearably irritating 
 influence. 
 
 During this time Ernest Chevalier continued to be his 
 most intimate friend ; but there were others also : Alfred le 
 Poittevin, whose sister was afterwards the mother of Guy de 
 Maupassant ; Louis Bouilhet, the poet ; Ernest le Marie, and 
 others, were members with Flaubert of a small circle of 
 romantic youths, who mutually excited one another into a 
 condition of literary exaltation which, in one or two cases, 
 passed beyond the limits of mere romantic imagining. One 
 of them hung himself. From the morbid excesses of his 
 companions Flaubert was protected by the healthy home-
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 7 
 
 life which he enjoyed whenever opportunity offered. His 
 taste for literature was indirectly encouraged by his parents, 
 who allowed the children and their friends to make a stage 
 of the billiard table, and declaim tragedies and comedies 
 from that elevation to an audience such as the household 
 could supply, with the addition of one or two sympathetic 
 friends. Caroline Flaubert took charge of the dresses ; the 
 mother's wardrobe was ransacked for cast-ofF clothes ; and 
 programmes were boldly issued, whose comprehensiveness 
 would have caused the company of the Theatre Fran(|^is 
 some misgiving. 
 
 Ernest Chevalier received the following letter in April 
 1832, the writer was not yet eleven years old : — 
 
 ' Victory Victory Victory Victory Victory you will come one 
 of these days my friend, the theatre, the bills, everything is 
 ready. When you come, Amadeus, Edmund, Mme. Chevalier, 
 mother, two servants and perhaps some boys will come to see 
 us play, we shall give four pieces, which you do not know, but 
 you will soon have learned them. The tickets for the first, 
 second and third rows are ready, there will be stalls, there will 
 also be drops, scenery. The curtain is arranged, perhaps there 
 will be ten or twelve people. Then we must have spirit and 
 not be afraid, there will be a sentry at the door, who will be 
 little Lerond, and his sister will be a ballet-dancer. I do not 
 know if you have seen Parcognac we shall play it, with a 
 piece by Berquin, another by Scribe, and a dramatised proverb 
 by Marmontel, it is useless for me to tell you their titles, you 
 do not know them I think, if you knew it, when I was told, 
 that you were not coming I was in a horrible rage. If by 
 chance you were not to ct me, I would sooner go on all fours 
 like the dogs of King Louis Philippe (taken from the Journal of 
 Caricatures,) to Andelys to look for you, and I think you would 
 do as much, for a love, so to say, brotherly unites us. Yes, I 
 who have sentiment I would go a thousand leagues, if it were 
 necessary, to meet the best of my friends, for nothing is so sweet 
 as friendship, oh sweet friendship ! how much has been seen to
 
 8 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 be done by this sentiment! without that tie how should we 
 live ? One sees this sentiment even in the smallest animals, 
 without friendship how would the feeble live ? How would 
 women and children find subsistence ? Permit me, my dear 
 friend, these gentle reflections, but I swear to you that they 
 are not made up, and that I have not tried to make rhetoric, 
 but I speak to you with the truth of a true friend. The cholera 
 morbus is hardly yet at the Infirmary. Your father is going on 
 the same. Come to Rouen. Farewell.' 
 
 In this letter, again, in spite of the precocity of the 
 thought, there are fearful struggles with the spelling, and 
 the writer does not ' stand upon his points." The imagina- 
 tive faculty was far in advance of the mechanical powers ; 
 even before this, when the small boy was still unable to 
 read, he would improvise scenes and dialogues, in which he 
 himself took all the parts, after sitting dreaming for a long 
 time, like any other child, with his thumb in his mouth. 
 
 Passionate friendship continued to be a ruling sentiment 
 with Flaubert. Old friends were never forgotten ; but as they 
 fell out of his life, others stepped into the vacant place, 
 without, however, disturbing the strength of the old attach- 
 ment. In his boyhood his friends were generally older than 
 himself : Ernest Chevalier was two or three years his senior ; 
 Alfred le Poittevin, whom he adored, and whose early death 
 he never ceased to speak of as leaving an unfilled void in 
 his life, was six years older. In the last years, when all had 
 left him, he found in the affection of young Guy de Mau- 
 passant, something of the same happiness ; two months 
 before his death, he wrote : — 
 
 ' My young man, you are right to love me, for your old fellow 
 is very fond of you, I at once read your volume, three 
 parts of which, for that matter, I already knew. We will go 
 over it again together. . . . Your dedication has stirred a 
 world of reminiscences in me, — your uncle Alfred, — your grand-
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 9 
 
 mother, — your mother, — and the old chap had for some 
 moments a swelling heart and a tear in his eyelids.' 
 
 From the beginning, Flaubert's friendships were founded 
 on literary sympathy : his heart was always open to a man, 
 or woman, who would talk books with him. Meanwhile, 
 there was nothing of the pale student about him ; in body, 
 as well as in intellect, he developed harmoniously as well as 
 rapidly, and eventually grew to be looked on as a giant. 
 
 During his boyhood the family used to spend the summer 
 holidays at Trouville, then a small fishing village ; and here 
 they made the acquaintance of the family of Admiral Collier, 
 whose eldest daughter, afterwards Mrs. Tennant, thus writes 
 of him : — 
 
 * Gustave Flaubert was then like a young Greek. In the 
 flower of his youth, he was tall and slender, supple and grace- 
 ful as an athlete, unconscious of the gifts which he possessed 
 morally and physically, caring little for the impression that 
 he produced, and entirely indifferent to accepted forms. 
 His dress consisted of a red flannel shii-t, rough blue cloth 
 trousers, a scarf of the same colour tightly bound around his 
 waist, and a hat placed anyhow on his head, which was as often 
 as not bare. When I used to speak to him of celebrity, or 
 influence to be exercised, as things desirable, and which I 
 should value, he used to listen, smile, and seem superbly 
 indifferent. He admired what was beautiful in nature, art and 
 literature, and would live for that, he used to say, without any 
 consideration of advantage. He never gave a thought to 
 ambition or gain. Was it not sufi cient for a thing to be true 
 and beautiful ? His great delight was to find something that 
 he judged worthy of admiration. The charm of his society was 
 in his enthusiasm for all that was noble, and the charm of his 
 mind in an intense individuality. He hated all hypocrisy. 
 What was wanting in his nature, was interest in external things, 
 in useful things. If some one happened to say, that religion, 
 politics, business, had as great an interest as literature and art, 
 he opened his eyes with amazement and compassion. To be a
 
 10 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 man of letters, an artist, that alone made it worth his while to 
 live.' 
 
 This sentiment had already been strongly expressed in a 
 letter written in his thirteenth year, wherein after telling his 
 friend that he was occupied in writing a romance, of which 
 Isabella of Bavaria was the heroine, he said : — 
 
 ' You think that I feel your absence, yes, you are right, and 
 if I had not a Queen of France of the fifteenth century in my 
 head and at the end of my pen, I should be completely sick of 
 life, and long ago a bullet would have delivered me from this 
 comic farce that is called life.' 
 
 Strong expressions of this kind need not be taken too 
 seriously on the lips of a boy of thirteen ; but as a similar 
 strain continued through the letters written in the next 
 eight years, and as the feeling involved was not peculiar to 
 Flaubert, there is some reason for inquiring into the external 
 conditions which produced this violence of sentiment in the 
 boys of France during Flaubert's youth. 
 
 It was the period of the literary revolution ; of the rise of 
 Romanticism. In Paris at this time a school broke out into 
 open mutiny on the question of a disrespectful criticism of 
 Victor Hugo by a master. This, and other schoolboy 
 excesses, were simply the natural reaction from unwise 
 repression. 
 
 Of all people, the French least understand liberty. What- 
 ever the outward form of government in France, the majority 
 always assumes to itself to prescribe for the minority, not 
 only what it shall do, but what it shall think, and pushes 
 this claim to its extreme logical conclusion. The possible 
 power of fiction in moulding the national mind to acquies- 
 cence in a particular form of government, and especially its 
 influence upon the young, was divined by the statesmen of 
 Louis XIV., whose imitator, Napoleon i., also wished the State
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 11 
 
 to control what the young should read. In spite of the 
 Revolution, the French schools, the schools in which the 
 directing classes were educated, steadily repressed freedom of 
 thought, and inculcated adherence to the stately forms of 
 the classic models. The Academy flung itself on its knees 
 before Charles x,, and petitioned that no work of the 
 Romantic School should be allowed to be performed on the 
 stage. If a boy was discovered to be reading Victor Hugo, 
 the horror of his teachers — their unaffected horror — was only 
 to be compared with the state of mind of an English 
 Evangelical family, whose younger members might be 
 detected poring over the works of Miss Braddon on a 
 Sabbath afternoon. Church and State were alike felt to 
 be in danger ; at the same time there was a genuine artistic 
 distaste for literature, which seemed to defy all preconceived 
 standards, and to combine a chaos of formlessness with an 
 equally chaotic morality. To declaim the stately Alex- 
 andrines of Racine and Corneille, imitate the honoured 
 prose of Fenelon, accept Moliere as light reading, was 
 allowed to the French youth ; but outside the circle of 
 accepted authors, of the word-mongers, who never called 
 anything by its right name, and saw the world not at first 
 hand, but in a kind of camera-obscura, whose images were 
 reflected from figures no longer existent, French boys were 
 not supposed to read anything ; and one of the most hateful 
 and hated duties of the unfortunate ushers was the unre- 
 mitting search for smuggled volumes. English people have 
 not been exempt, especially in certain religious connections, 
 from the same suspicion of literature. Head-masters of 
 schools controlled by the Society of Friends have been known 
 to warn their departing pupils, in bidding them farewell, 
 on no account to read the pernicious works of one William 
 Shakespeare ; but in England there has never prevailed the
 
 12 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 same universal blockade against certain schools of literature, 
 that was, and perhaps still is, one of the most marked 
 features of French education. To the majority of boys 
 such a matter is of small importance : they have no inclina- 
 tion to read, and feel no indignation at being deprived of 
 the privilege. All reading is lessons with them ; and as, 
 from their point of view, no boy in his senses would read a 
 book for himself, it would make little difference to them 
 whether the work interdicted were Marmontel or Chateau- 
 briand ; Byron, or the Rasselas of Dr. Johnson. On the boys 
 gifted with the literary temperament, on the other hand, the 
 restrictions produced a sense of grievance, which lasted so 
 long as life lasted ; it seemed to them that all authority was 
 banded together in enmity against what they felt to be the 
 best thing in life ; that certain books alone were permitted ; 
 inclined them to believe that other books alone Avere worth 
 reading ; and the result was, that they not only rebelled 
 openly against, or despised their teachers, but, in all kinds of 
 clandestine ways, prematurely studied works to measure 
 whose true value and true meaning they had not had the 
 necessary experience of life. Before he was seventeen, 
 Flaubert was reading Victor Hugo, Byron, Shakespeare, 
 Rabelais, Montaigne, and early acquired the conviction that 
 there was no such thing as indecency in true literature. For 
 a while, the literature of the schoolmasters seemed to him not 
 to be literature at all. English schools of the same period 
 do not seem to have bothered themselves with English 
 literature in any form. We see in Thackeray traces of a 
 revolt against literary despotism, but it is against the 
 despotism of Latin and Greek ; he had no need to be 
 indignant that G. P. R. James and Walter Scott were with- 
 held from him, and that Addison's Cato was forced upon 
 him. There are some advantages in belonging to a nation
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 13 
 
 which only intermittently takes literature seriously. Flaubert 
 and his schoolfellows were cut off from the advantage of 
 discussing, with men of mature experience, the questions 
 which most interested them, the authors they liked best ; 
 consequently they were unable to analyse and estimate mere 
 rhetoric, the cynicism of disappointment ; they did not 
 know that the poet sings, like the linnet, ' because he must ' ; 
 that the mood which produces Lara, is compatible with a 
 great deal of dining out ; and that that despairing poetess, 
 Miss Bunion, ' ate a mutton chop for breakfast every morning 
 of her blighted existence/ 
 
 On August the fourteenth 1835, Flaubert being now 
 thirteen years and seven months old, wrote to Ernest 
 Chevalier : — 
 
 ' I see with indignation that the censorship of the stage is to 
 be established again, and the liberty of the Press abolished. 
 Yes, — this law will pass, for the representatives of the people 
 are nothing but a foul heap of mercenai'ies. Their aim is self- 
 interest, turpitude is their hobby, a brute pride their honour, 
 their soul a mud heap ; but one day, a day that will soon come, 
 the people will begin the third revolution ; then take care of 
 your head, look out for rivers of blood. It is of his conscience 
 that the man of letters is now being robbed, of his artist's 
 conscience. Yes, — our age is fertile in sudden and bloody 
 changes. Fare thee well, — and as for us, let us concern 
 ourselves always with art, with art, that is greater than peoples, 
 than crowns and kings, always there, floating on Enthusiasm 
 with her heavenly diadem.' 
 
 Strip this letter of its boyish rhetoric and you have 
 Flaubert's life; from the determination here expressed he 
 never deviated. 
 
 In a letter written two years afterwards, a passage occurs 
 in a different vein, very characteristic of his later life : — 
 
 'Old Langlois and Orlowski dined at our house yesterday, 
 and they made a pretty good thing of it, drinking, stuffing.
 
 14 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ranting. Achille, myself and Bizet are invited for Sunday to go 
 and fuddle oui'selves, smoke and listen to music at Orlowskis'. 
 All the Polish refugees will be there. There are thirty of 
 them. It is a national festival ; every Easter Sunday they 
 have a similar feast in the house of one of them. They eat 
 sausages, black puddings, hard boiled eggs, pig's flesh, and no 
 one is permitted to go out till he has been drunk and has 
 spewed, five or six times.' 
 
 The same letter concludes with violent jubilation over the 
 detection of one of the hated ushers in compromising circum- 
 stances, whom he credits with having 'a dirty shirt, dirty 
 stockings, and a dirty soul.' 
 
 In April 1874, Flaubert published a volume called The 
 Temptation of St. Antliony — a sort of prose poem, in 
 which humanity, represented by the saint, is assailed by all 
 the forms of religion and erratic imaginations possible to 
 mankind in the fourth century a.d. The book had been 
 \vi-itten three times ; the first manuscript was destroyed, under 
 circumstances hereafter to be described, in 1849; the second 
 at the time when Flaubert abandoned his house to the 
 Prussians billeted upon him in 1870. In 1839 we find the 
 germ of this book, to which he has already alluded in 
 December 1838 :— 
 
 ' I am hardly reading at all now, I have again taken up a 
 piece of work long laid aside, a mystery, a hash, of which, I 
 think, I have already spoken to you. Here it is in two words. 
 Satan leads a man, (Smar,) into infinite space, they both rise in 
 the air to an immeasurable distance. Then Smar, to whom so 
 much is disclosed, is filled with pride. He believes that all 
 the mysteries of creation and infinity are revealed to him; 
 but Satan leads him still higher. Then he is frightened, 
 he trembles, this vast abyss seems to devour him, in the void 
 he is feeble. They descend again to earth. There is his own 
 soil, he says, that it is to live there that he was created, and 
 everything in nature is subjected to him. Then a storm rises ;
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 15 
 
 the sea threatens to swallow him up. He again admits his 
 weakness^ his nothingness. Satan proceeds to take him 
 amongst mankind. First the savage sings of his happiness, 
 his wandering life, but all of a sudden, a desire to depart to 
 the city seizes him, he cannot resist it, he goes. There you 
 have the barbarous races, who become civilised. Secondly 
 they come to the town, to the king racked with pain, a prey 
 to the seven deadly sins, to the poor, to the married, into the 
 church, which is deserted. All parts of the building take up 
 their voice to bewail this, from the vault of the nave to the 
 flag-stones, all speak and curse God. Then the church having 
 become blasphemous, falls. In all this there is a personage, 
 who takes part in all the events, and turns them to farce. He 
 is Yuk the god of the grotesque. Thus in the first scene, 
 while Satan was corrupting Smar through his pride, Yuk was 
 pledging a married woman to surrender herself to the first- 
 comer, without distinction. It is laughter beside tears and 
 agonies ; filth beside blood. At last, Smar is disgusted with 
 the world, he would like the whole thing done with ; but 
 Satan on the conti-ary, goes on to make him experience all the 
 passions, and all the wretchedness that he has seen. He bears 
 him on winged horses to the banks of the Ganges. There, 
 monstrous and fantastic orgies, debauchery such as I can 
 imagine it, but debaucheiy wearies him. Again after this 
 he experiences ambition. He becomes poet ; after his vanished 
 illusions his despair becomes immense ; the cause of heaven is 
 like to be lost. Smar has not yet experienced love. Then a 
 woman appears ... a woman ... he loves her, he has become 
 beautiful again, but Satan falls in love with her also. They 
 each try to seduce her for themselves. Who will have the 
 victory ? Satan you think ? No ! Yuk the grotesque. This 
 woman is Truth, and the whole thing ends in a monstrous 
 union.' 
 
 Reminiscences oi Faust are obvious enough in this strange 
 rigmarole, written by a boy of eighteen, but the position 
 of the god of the grotesque is individual, and Flauberfs 
 own. Under another form Yuk appears in the published 
 St. Anthony; he attends on the debaucheries and death-bed of
 
 16 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 Madame Bovary ; he waits on the footsteps of all the 
 characters in the Sentimental Education ; we catch glimpses 
 of him in Salammho. He is in the last line of the Herodias ; 
 in more than one passage of the St. Julian ; slightly shocks 
 us in the Story of a Simple Soid ; and is the moving spirit, 
 the life and breath, of Bouva?'d and Ptcuchef. 
 
 About this period, Ernest Chevalier had left school and 
 gone to Paris to read law, where he was not particularly 
 happy. Flaubert, in reply to some of his wailings, wrote 
 the following edifying letter under the nose of the 'Sieur 
 Amyot,"* who was lecturing on the theory of eclipses, to an 
 apparently unsympathetic audience : — 
 
 ' And you too ! Why ! I credited you with more common 
 sense than myself, dear friend, do you too squall and sob ? 
 What ? Good heavens ! what is the matter, pray, with you ? 
 Know you that the young generation of students is superbly 
 stupid ; formerly it had more go ; it amused itself with women, 
 sword thrusts, orgies ; now it drapes itself after Byron, dreams 
 of despair, and padlocks its heart to its own content. It is, 
 who shall look the palest, and say the loudest, " I am surfeited, 
 palled ! " How sad ! surfeited at eighteen ! Is there no more 
 love, no more glory, no more work ! Is that all burned out } 
 No more nature ? No more flowers for the young man ? No, 
 — let us leave all that ! Let us do our sadness in art, since 
 we feel the more strongly in that direction, but in life let us 
 do our merriment, let the cork fly, let the pipe be filled, let 
 the wench disrobe ! damn it all ! and if one evening in the 
 twilight during an hour of fog and snow, we have the spleen, 
 let it come, but not often ; one must scrape one's heart from 
 time to time with a bit of suffering to get the whole scab off" it. 
 There ! That is what I advise you to do, and what I myself 
 struggle to put in practice.' 
 
 So much for Sieur Amyot and his theory of eclipses. 
 Among the absurdities collected by Flaubert for the second, 
 never finished, part of Bouvard et Pecuchet, is the following
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 17 
 
 statement of Monseigneur Dupanloup occurring in a treatise 
 on education : ' The study of Mathematics by repressing 
 sentiment and imagination, sometimes renders the explosion 
 of the passions terrible.' Most of Flaubert's letters at this 
 period were written during mathematical lessons, and tend 
 to confirm the dictum of the Archbishop ; these studies 
 certainly convinced him temporarily of the futility of his 
 existence : — 
 
 ' O what a lot of money I would give to be either more 
 stupid or less intellectual ! Atheist or mystic ! but at any 
 rate something complete and whole, an identity, in a word 
 something.' 
 
 These words seem to have been suggested by a disquisi- 
 tion on square roots. 
 
 At Easter 1840 he spent the usual holiday at Les Andelys, 
 and on his return wrote as follows : — 
 
 ' It is thus that I am made, happy days always give me a 
 thousand sad ones, joy that is passed depresses me ; holiday 
 days for me have always dismal morrows. 
 
 ' I really felt while returning to Rouen that something of my 
 happiness was departing ; the sum of felicity apportioned to each 
 of us is small, and when we have spent a little bit of it, we are 
 altogether gloomy. I was sitting on the outside of the coach 
 in silence, my face to the wind, rocked by the swing of the 
 gallop. I felt the road fly under me, and with it all the years 
 of my youth, I thought of all my other expeditions to les 
 Andelys, I plunged myself up to the neck in all these 
 memories, I compared them vaguely to the smoke of my pipe 
 which was flying away, leaving the air all perfumed behind it. 
 As I approached Rouen, I began to feel the life of fact, the 
 present ; they began to take hold of me, and with them the 
 work of every day, the life of detail, the working table, the 
 accursed hours, the cavern in which my thought struggles and 
 fights to death. Yes, — there are days, like yesterday, for 
 instance, when one is sad, when one's heart is big with tears, 
 when one loathes oneself, and could devour one's own heart for
 
 18 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 rage. What one should do, is, not think of the past^ not say 
 td one's self: "there must still be sunshine there, it is seventy 
 two hours since I was in such a place, I still see the shadow of 
 my head on the highroad, flying after the horses, and a thousand 
 other follies " ; one must look at the future, stretch out one's 
 neck to see the horizon, fling one's self forward, put down 
 one's head, and on quickly, without listening to the wailing 
 voice of tender memories, which would fain call one back 
 to the valley of everlasting sorrow. One must not look into 
 the abyss, for in its depths there is an inexpressible charm that 
 draws us down.'
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE LAW STUDENT CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIS SISTER 
 
 In the summer of 1839 Flaubert finally left school, and, 
 after a short journey in the South of France and Corsica 
 with Dr. Jules Cloquet, a friend of his father''s, went to 
 Paris, like his friend Chevalier, to study law. From this 
 time, till his return home four years later, his chief corres- 
 pondent was his sister ; and in these letters we get a glimpse 
 of the home life, and of the vigorous, active, outward person- 
 ality of the lad whose thoughts were often so sombre. The 
 Flaubert family continued their love of acting long after 
 their childhood, and though they do not seem to have con- 
 tinued performances on the stage, they were in the habit of 
 assuming the parts of sundry fictitious characters for one 
 another''s amusement ; one of Gustave''s chief roles was that 
 of the 'gar^on,"* a personage whose characteristics are not 
 otherwise indicated. We know of him that he had a marked 
 laugh, which we may assume to have been inane, loud and 
 fatuous, and that Gustave once discovered an epitaph for 
 him : * Here lies one given to all the vices."* On the whole, 
 he does not seem to have been an estimable character, and 
 perhaps the less we know of him the better. This vein of 
 buffoonery remained with Flaubert all his life ; he would do 
 anything to amuse his friends ; anything to make the people 
 that he liked laugh heartily. Even in his correspondence he 
 
 19
 
 20 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 occasionally poses in a character not his own ; and late in 
 life wrote a sham autobiography, for George Sand, of the 
 Rev. Father Cruchard, whose character, he professed, was 
 his own. 
 
 The study of law was not congenial to Flaubert ; he took 
 it up in obedience to the wishes of his father, a practical 
 man, who saw no future in literature, and seems to have 
 classed literary men with the sword-thrusters and ballet- 
 dancers, whom Moliere''s teacher of philosophy so profoundly 
 despised. 
 
 Maxime Ducamp thus describes the first apparition of 
 Flaubert upon him during these days of reading law ; he 
 was living in rooms with Ernest le Marie, a former college 
 friend of Flauberfs at Rouen : — 
 
 'One day in March, 1843, while le Marie was hammering 
 out Beethoven's funeral march on the piano, and I was slinging 
 rhymes, we heard a peal of the bell, violent, imperious, the 
 ring of a master. I saw a tall fellow come in, with a long fair 
 beard, and his hat over his ear. Gustave Flaubert was then 
 twenty-one years old. He was of heroic beauty. With his 
 white skin slightly flushed upon the cheeks, his long fine 
 floating hair, his tall broad-shouldered figure, his abundant 
 golden beard, his enormous eyes — the colour of the green of 
 the sea — veiled under black eyelashes, with his voice as 
 sonorous as the blast of a trumpet, his exaggerated gestures, 
 and resounding laugh ; he was like those young Gallic chiefs 
 who fought against the Roman armies.' 
 
 Meanwhile this overpowering giant was writing to the 
 
 little sister at home. 
 
 'May 16, 1841. 
 
 'Thank you heartily, good mouse, for the letter that you 
 sent me yesterday ; it was dainty and clever, like yourself, full 
 of flashes of wit, which I have learned by heart, and which I 
 mean to pass on as my own on the first opportunity. . . . 
 
 ' Keep a brave heart, dear old mouse, for next Saturday ! 
 Come up now ! Assurance ! Thunder and lightning ! There
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 21 
 
 we are — one two — one two — not too quick — close the shakes, 
 brrr the Httle runs, don't let us lose our head ! 
 
 ' Since you are doing geometry and trigonometry, I will give 
 you a problem : A ship is on the sea, it left Boston laden with 
 cotton, it is of 200 tons burden, it sails towards Havre, the 
 mainmast is broken, there is a cabin boy on the fore-peak, the 
 passengers are twelve in number, the wind blows N.E.E., the 
 chronometer reads a quarter past three in the afternoon, the 
 month is May. Required — the Captain's age.' 
 
 'July, 1841. 
 
 'The holidays are approaching. I warn you both, however, 
 of one thing, you and mamma ; during the stay that I am 
 going to make at Rouen, you must be agreeable, you must have 
 pleasant faces ; the same remark may be addressed to Mistress 
 Fargues. Suffer as much as you like, in the back, in the head ; 
 have chilblains, rashes, what not ! but act so as to make the 
 house comfortable to me. However you behave, I shall always 
 be happier there than here. 
 
 ' I breathe a little more now, and consider my job nearly 
 done. I am merry, jocose, I burn to climb on to the coach, I 
 see myself arriving at Rouen on Tuesday morning, ascending 
 the stairs at a run, bawling, and kissing you. 
 
 ' From time to time I give vent to peals of laughter in the 
 style of the " gar9on " to amuse myself, and I do Father 
 Couillere as I look at myself in the glass.' 
 
 'March 1842. 
 ' Dialogue which took place an hour ago. 
 ' Personages : Myself. — My Bedmaker. 
 
 ' (I hear a noise). 
 
 ' Bedmaker (Jrom the hmding). — It is me, sir ; don't disturb 
 yourself. (Enter Bedmaker.) I am bringing you some matches, 
 sir, for you want them. 
 
 ' Myself. — Yes. 
 
 ' Bedmaker. — The gentleman burns a good many of them. 
 He works so much. Ah, how he works ! I could not do as 
 much, I who speak to you. 
 
 ' Myself. — Yes. 
 
 ' Bedmaker. — The gentleman is soon a-going ! You are right. 
 
 ' Myself. — Yes.
 
 22 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' Bedmaker. — That will do you a world of good just to take 
 the air a little ; for since you have been here^ I am sure, I am 
 sure . . . 
 
 ' Myself {pointedly). — Yes. 
 
 ' Bedmaker (raising her voice). — Your parents ought to be 
 pleased to have a son like you. (This is her fixed idea, she has 
 already told Hamard so.) 
 
 ' Myself. — Yes. 
 
 'Bedmaker. — The fact is, you see, nothing pleases parents 
 more than to see their children work well. Ah well ! When 
 I see Alphonsine at work, there 's nothing pleases me so much 
 as that. Just you work well, you work well, that is what I say 
 to her every day, naughty idle girl ! You like to stay like that 
 doing nothing ! But I must be telling you, she is a little 
 delicate, my poor Alphonsine. Yes, she has a little gathering 
 just now, that keeps her from sewing. She is not so bad as I 
 am — no — no. Ah yes, when I was young, I had finer features 
 than she has; ah yes, see you, she has not as fine features 
 as I have ; that is what I say to her every day : Alphonsine, 
 you have not as fine features as I have. But you, sir, it is not 
 that way with you, it is the head that works, it is memory that 
 you want. Yes, certainly, yes, you will need to take the air." 
 
 ' She was still speaking, long after 1 had ceased to listen. 
 
 * Ah mouse, good mouse, dear old mouse ! take care to have 
 good strong cheeks for next week, for I simply long to kiss 
 them for you. I will give myself a regular bout. Yes, when 
 1 think of it, I shall certainly not be able to keep from hurting 
 you.' 
 
 While enjoying the holiday looked forward to in the last 
 letter, Flaubert again replied to a jeremiad from Ernest 
 Chevalier, who had remained in Paris : — 
 
 ' What ! old scamp ! to what a condition " a man like you " is 
 reduced ! Take it easy, my fine fellow, take it easy ! Instead 
 of reading so much law do a little philosophy, read Rabelais, 
 Montaigne, Horace, or some other old chap, who has seen 
 life under a less stormy sky, and learn once for all, that you 
 must not ask apple-trees for oranges, France for sunshine, 
 women for love, life for happiness. Up with you ! think of
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 23 
 
 soup, of meat, of pdies de foie gras, of Chambertin. How can 
 you complain of life, when there are still beds wherein a man 
 may console himself with love, and a bottle of wine to lose his 
 senses withal ! Pluck up your courage, confound it ! take to a 
 severe course of life, play larks at night, break the gas lamps, 
 have rows with cabmen, smoke like a chimney, go to cafes, 
 bolt without paying, smash in hats, belch in peoples' faces, 
 disperse your melancholy, and thank Providence. For the 
 century in which you were born is a happy century, railways 
 furrow the fields, there are bituminous clouds, and rains of 
 coal, asphalt-paths, and wooden pavements, penitentiaries for 
 young felons, and savings' -banks for thrifty domestics who go 
 there incontinent to deposit, what they have stolen from their 
 masters. M. Hebert is public prosecutor, and bishops issue 
 pastorals, whores go to mass, kept women talk at least of 
 morals, and the government defends religion; the unfortunate 
 Theophile Gautier is accused of immorality by M. Faure, authors 
 are put in prison, and pamphleteers are paid. But the funniest 
 thing of all is the Executive protecting sound morals and repel- 
 ling outrages upon orthodox views. Human justice is indeed 
 to me the most farcical thing in the world ; one man judging 
 another is a sight, which would make me die of laughing, if it 
 did not stir my compassion, and if I were not at present being 
 compelled to study the string of absurdities, in virtue of which 
 he is a judge. I can see nothing more stupid than jurispru- 
 dence, if it is not the study of jurisprudence ; I work at it with 
 profound disgust, and that deprives me of all heart, and spirit 
 for any thing else. I am even beginning to get a little 
 anxious about ray examination, but only a little, and I won't 
 disturb my spleen any the more for that. Here is the summer 
 coming back, that is all that I want, may the Seine be warm 
 for me to bathe in ! the scent of the flowers be good ! the 
 shadows of the trees deep ! 
 
 ' Do you know the epitaph of Henri Heine ? Here it is : " He 
 loved the roses of Brenta." That might well be mine. The 
 " gar9on's epitaph " : " Here lies a man abandoned to all the 
 vices." 
 
 ' Often I shrug my shoulders with pity, when I think of all 
 the trouble that we give ourselves, all the anxiety which gnaws
 
 24 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 us, to be successful, to get ourselves a fortune and a name ; 
 how empty all that is ! how pitiful ! To wear a black coat 
 from morning to evening, to have boots, braces, gloves, books, 
 opinions, push one's self, get one's self pushed, introduce one's 
 self, do one's bow, and go one's way ! O Lord ! 
 
 ' Where is my Fontarabian shore, where the sand is golden, 
 the sea blue, the houses black, birds sing among the ruins ? 
 Again there are known to me paths in the snow, the air is 
 keen, the wind wails in the hollows of the mountains. There 
 the solitary shepherd whistles his wandering dogs, there he 
 expands his bare chest and breathes at his ease, and the air is 
 balmy with the perfume of larch. 
 
 ' Who will give me back the Mediterranean breezes, for on 
 those shores the heart expands, the myrtles shed their scent, 
 there is a murmuring of waves. Hurrah for sun, orange trees, 
 palms, lotus, boats with streamers, cool pavilions paved with 
 marble, where the wainscots breathe of love. Oh — if I had a 
 tent made of reeds and bamboo on the banks of the Ganges, 
 how would I listen all night to the ripple of the current in the 
 rushes, to cooing birds perched on bright-stemmed trees ! 
 
 ' But, damn it all ! I say. Shall I ever walk with my own 
 feet in the sands of Syria? Where the red horizon dazzles, 
 where the earth rises in burning spirals, and eagles poise in 
 the fiery sky ? Shall I never see the cities of the embalmed 
 dead, where hyenas bark kennelled under the mummies of 
 kings at the time when the evening comes, and the hour, when 
 camels crouch by the wells. In those countries the stars are 
 four times as big as ours, the sunshine scorches, women writhe 
 and spring under kisses and embraces, they wear bracelets and 
 rings of gold on their feet and hands, and robes of fine gauze. 
 
 ' Only sometimes, when the sun is setting, I imagine that I 
 am arriving all of a sudden at Ai-les, twilight illumines the 
 amphitheatre, and gilds the marble tombs of the Elis-campi ; 
 and I begin my journey again, I go further, still further, like a 
 leaf borne on the wind. 
 
 ' A reminiscence is a fine thing, it almost amounts to a 
 regretted longing.* 
 
 Among the many strange contrasts in Flaubert's character,
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 25 
 
 his intimate friends noted the voluptuousness of his imagina- 
 tion and the purity of his hfe. 
 
 The noisy rioting of the student, which he describes in 
 this letter, and humorously recommends to Ernest Chevalier, 
 bored him infinitely. His pleasures were entirely literary. 
 Endless discussions as to the merits of poets and playwriters, 
 arguments on every possible subject, from the nature of the 
 soul and immortality to the merits of a music-hall song, 
 were the chief occupation of the small knot of students 
 with whom he associated. He visited a few houses, especi- 
 ally the studio of Pradier, the sculptor, which was a kind of 
 Bohemian literary club, and spent many of his afternoons 
 reading to the daughters of Admiral Collier, whose family 
 were then living in Paris, 
 
 Meanwhile, he continued to be horribly bored by the 
 lectures on law. 
 
 ' If you think from reading my letters^ that I am not 
 miserable, my poor mouse, you are as far out of it as you can 
 be. ... If you had an idea of the hfe that I lead, you would 
 imagine it without difficulty. Montaigne, my old Montaigne, 
 said: "We must embeast ourselves to be wise." I am always 
 so emheasted, that it may pass for wisdom, and even for virtue. 
 Sometimes I long to go at my table with my fists, and make 
 everything fly to smithereens, then, when the fit is over, I 
 perceive by my clock, that I have lost half-an-hour in lamenta- 
 tions, and I set myself to blacken paper, and turn over pages 
 with more speed than ever.' 
 
 Maxime Ducamp confirms this description of his methods 
 of work where law was the subject. 
 
 ' How often have I seen him push away his Code Civile 
 and say : " I don't understand a word of it, it \s raving- 
 nonsense.''"' He then betook himself to the commentaries, 
 and found that they were raving nonsense too."' 
 
 ' His method of working was hardly practical ; under the
 
 26 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 pretence of taking notes, he copied the books upon the 
 subjects that he had to study ; now, he copied mechanically, 
 thinking of something else ; the result was physical fatigue, 
 and an accumulation of valueless papers."" 
 
 In May 1842 the first railway from Paris to Rouen was 
 opened. Flaubert alluded to the event as follows : — 
 
 ' Paris is no better favoured than Rouen in the matter of the 
 railway, and if you are bored with hearing it talked about, you 
 are just in the same plight as myself. It is impossible to go 
 anywhere without hearing people say : " Ah, I am off to Rouen ! 
 I come from Rouen ! Shall you go to Rouen ?" Never has 
 the capital of Neustria made such a sensation at Lutetia 
 Parisiorum. One is simply stewed in it.' 
 
 The next month a long letter full of the horrors of law- 
 lectures concluded as follows : — 
 
 ' When I think of all of you, anyhow, something good and 
 gentle breathes fresh life into me, and cheers me ; a thousand 
 tender happy suggestions come back to my heart, and I go 
 from one to the other watching you all from here, as you move, 
 speak with the tones of your own voices, get up and sit down 
 in those clothes of yours, that I know. At this moment, for 
 example, good mousey, I have your full gentle laugh in my 
 ears : that laugh for which I would do myself to death in 
 buffooneries, for which I would give my very last grimace, my 
 last drop of saliva ; so much so, that sometimes alone in my 
 room I pull faces at myself in the looking-glass, or utter the 
 cry of the " gar9on " as if you were there to see me and admire 
 me ; for I am very much bored by my present audience.' 
 
 Meanwhile, to others Flaubert did not appear to be 
 particularly miserable at Paris. ' His health,' says Maxinie 
 Ducamp, ' which nothing had disturbed permitted him to 
 endure fatigue with impunity ; in vain did ho spend the 
 nights in working at law, of which ho mulorstood nothing 
 whatever ; ran about the whole day, dined at a restaurant.
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 27 
 
 went to the theatre, he continued none the less alert in his 
 own sluggish way, mixing pleasure and study, playing 
 ducks and drakes with his money, spending fifty francs 
 on his dinner one day, living the next day on a crust of 
 bread and a cake of chocolate, chanting prose, howling verse, 
 going mad over a joke, which he repeated to the point of 
 surfeit, filling everything with his noise, despising women 
 whom his beauty attracted, coming to wake me up at three 
 o'clock in the morning to look at an effect of moonlight on 
 the Seine, in despair at not being able to find good Pont 
 L'Eveque cheese at Paris, inventing sauces to suit brill, and 
 wishing to slap the face of Gustave Planche, who had spoken 
 ill of Victor Hugo.'' 
 
 Meanwhile, the silent anxious mother at home was begin- 
 ning to have misgivings as to the possible result of the 
 examination ; and, mother-like, was proceeding to take highly 
 irregular steps in the hope of softening the heart of an 
 examiner. Her son did not sympathise with her efforts in 
 this direction : — 
 
 ' I entreat mother not to pledge M. Getillat to make interest 
 on my behalf with gentlemen, who may be of his acquaintance. 
 I should be very much humiliated by it, and all these tricks are 
 not in my line. To get oneself recommended by one's friends 
 is bad enough, but by ladies ! it is a little low, a little too 
 strong for me. Besides " men like me " are not made to be 
 ploughed. I try to get up my cheek and do the swell, none 
 the less I am not over-confident. Can this possibly be an 
 excess of modesty ? 
 
 ' Friend Hamard (he afterwards married Caroline Flaubert, 
 and was the father of Madame Commanville) has just spent 
 twenty-four hours in prison for having refused to go on guard. 
 I went to see him. He was rotting on the damp straw of the 
 dungeons, and was studying the laws in that abode, where 
 those are confined who break them.' 
 
 Ernest Chevalier seems also to have been concerned at the
 
 28 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 possible outcome of Flauberfs methods of pursuing the 
 study of jurisprudence, and got his answer as follows : — 
 
 ' Do I long to be successful, I, to be a great man ? a man 
 known in a district, in a department, in three provinces, a thin 
 man, a man with a weak digestion ? Have I ambition, like 
 shoe-blacks, who aspire to be boot-makers, drivers to be stud- 
 grooms, footmen to play the master, your man of ambition to 
 be a deputy or a minister, to wear a ribbon, be a town 
 councillor ? All that seems to me very dismal, and attracts 
 me as little as a fourpenny dinner or a humanitarian lecture. 
 But it is after all everybody's mania; and were it only to be 
 singular, not from good taste, for the sake of good breeding, 
 not from inclination, it is a good thing now to remain among 
 the crowd, and leave all that to the scum, who are forever 
 pushing themselves and swarm in every street. As for us, let 
 us stay at home, let us watch the public pass from the height 
 of our balcony ; and if from time to time we are over-bored, 
 well, let us spit on their heads, and then calmly continue our 
 talk, and watch the sun setting in the west.' 
 
 In November 1842 the student of law was seized with a 
 fit of economy. 
 
 ' I have made a contract with a purveyor in the neighbour- 
 hood to be fed ; I have in front of me thirty dinners duly paid 
 for, if dinners they can be called. Mother will perhaps be 
 surprised at my economical notion ; it is not epicurean ; but 
 convenient and cheap. In the matter of rapid eating I surpass 
 all the customers of the establishment. I affect a preoccupied 
 style there, at once dark and careless, which makes me laugh 
 prodigiously when I am alone in the street. The proprietor is 
 full of respect for me, my tall stature has prejudiced him in 
 favour of my stomach. You ask me if I have an arm chair ; my 
 sitting apparatus consists of only three chairs, and a kind of 
 divan, which can serve at once as box, bed, library, and place 
 to put my slippers away in. I think it might also be turned 
 into a dog-kennel or stable for a pony. It is the bed which I 
 destine for my parents, when they come to see me. I perceive
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 29 
 
 that I have said something rude in the attempt to be witty and 
 do the agreeable. 
 
 * In all the comedies in the world sons invent a heap of 
 humbug to bamboozle their fathers, and get money out of 
 them ; I have no humbug to invent, but I do want some money 
 (money, always money, this is the word they invariably have in 
 their mouths). I have the sum of thirty-six francs and some 
 centimes left. You will draw attention to the fact, that I have 
 paid for my furniture, and I have further been obliged to buy a 
 heap of things, shovels, tongs, wood to warm " a man like me," 
 and that moreover I stayed eight days at a hotel, etc. Therefore, 
 I beg father to tell me, where I can go and handle a bit of tin.' 
 
 The simple youth, who wrote the above ingenuous lines, 
 had not escaped notice in the capital. Through the connec- 
 tion formed with Pradier he had been introduced to Victor 
 Hugo, of whom he wrote in January 1843 : — 
 
 ' You are expecting details about Victor Hugo, what do you 
 want me to say about him .'' He is a man like anybody else, 
 with a fairly ugly face, and a fairly common exterior. He has 
 splendid teeth, a fine forehead, no eyelashes nor eyebrows. He 
 speaks little, has the air of watching himself, and wishing not 
 to let anything escape from him ; he is very polished, and a 
 little affected. I am very much pleased with the sound of his 
 voice. I took pleasure in contemplating him at close quarters ; 
 I looked at him with astonishment, as at a casket in which 
 there might be millions, and crown diamonds, thinking of all 
 that had come out of this man seated beside me on a low chair, 
 fastening his eyes on his right hand, which has written so many 
 fine things. This, however, was the man who has made my 
 heart beat the most since I was born, and whom perhaps I 
 loved the best of all those that I do not know. The talk was 
 of punishments, vengeance, thieves, etc. etc. The great man 
 and I did the most of the talking. I do not remember whether 
 I said good things or bad ones, but I know I said plenty of 
 them. As you see, I go fairly often to the Pradiers, it is a 
 house that I like very much, where there is no ceremony, and 
 which is altogether in my style.'
 
 30 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 Writing to Ernest Chevalier shortly afterwards, he draws 
 the following amusing contrast between the life of the 
 student of the Quartier Latin and that of the dandy on the 
 fashionable south bank of the Seine : — 
 
 ' On the other side of the water there are young folks with 
 twelve hundred pounds a year, who have their carriages ; the 
 student goes on foot, or on the top of the omnibus, where his 
 whole body is drenched, if not his feet, when it snows as it did 
 to-day. The young folk over there go every evening to the 
 Opera, to the Italians, they go to evening receptions, they 
 smile at pretty women, who would have us turned out of doors 
 by their hall-porters if we presumed to show ourselves in their 
 houses with our shiny overcoats, our three-year-old costumes, 
 and our elegant spats. Their everyday coats are our holiday 
 and Sunday coats. They go to dine at the Rocher de Cancale 
 and the Cafe de Paris ; the jolly student feeds himself for thirty 
 half-pence, at Barilhaut ! They make love to marchionesses, or 
 princes' mistresses ; the poor joker of a student loves shop-girls, 
 who have chilblains on their hands, for the poor devil has his 
 senses like another ; but not too often, like myself, for example, 
 because it costs money ; and when he has paid his tailor, his 
 boot-maker, his landlord, his book-seller, his Law School, his 
 porter, his grocer, his eating-house, he has to buy boots, an 
 overcoat, books, to pay his fees, his wages, buy his tobacco, and 
 he has nothing left, his spirit is broken. Never mind, it is as 
 amusing as anything else to study law at Paris. And as that 
 is entirely my opinion, I am going to bed directly.' 
 
 In August 1843 Flaubert presented himself before the 
 examiners, and was rejected. A man, whose memory for 
 the particular line in a page, in which a word occurred that 
 had attracted his notice years before, was almost miraculous ; 
 a man gifted with the true scholar^s memory, and who, in 
 after years, was able by virtue of this gift to achieve work 
 such as only one or two other men have attempted, could 
 not bring to his aid even the mediocre standard of remini- 
 scence necessary to pass an examination in a comparatively
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 31 
 
 small number of books. He was absolutely paralysed in the 
 presence of his examiners ; stumbled, stuttered, gave the 
 wrong answers to the questions, and, in spite of their wish 
 to help him, absolutely collapsed. He returned to Rouen, 
 and the School of Law saw him not again.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 ILLNESS MAXIME DUCAMP 
 
 In the month of October, at about the time when he 
 should have returned to Paris, Flaubert was seized with an 
 hy.sterico-epileptic attack. The nature of this disease was 
 even less well understood then, than it is now. Pere Flaubert 
 accepted the conclusion, to which other eminent medical 
 authorities had come, that epilepsy was due to a plethora 
 of vitality ; and in the case of Gustave, the expansive noisy 
 giant, there was every excuse for believing that this might 
 be the case. He bled, starved, drenched his unfortunate 
 son, with all the more vigour that his pride, both paternal 
 and professional, was wounded by the calamity. In spite of 
 the treatment Flaubert eventually shook off the disease ; a 
 journey in Brittany with Maxime Ducamp in 1847 nearly 
 cured him ; and another journey in the East with the same 
 friend, 1849-1851, caused a complete suspension. The attacks 
 did not return till the closing years of his life. 
 
 Nevertheless the disease, and possibly the erroneous treat- 
 ment, made a deep mark on the thread of his existence. 
 From this time onwards, as he told George Sand, he ' was 
 afraid of life."* The three years spent under the supervision 
 of a medical attendant or a servant were years of misery to 
 him. He did his best to overcome the depression and the 
 weakness ; he experimented on himself in dealing with the 
 
 32
 
 IJFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 33 
 
 latter, and learned to control it, but the nightmare of the 
 months of uncertainty was always there, and though the 
 violent seizures passed into abeyance, a nervous irritability 
 remained. Intellectually he was not affected by it ; epilepsy 
 is not in all its forms a disease of the intellect. The first 
 Caesar was an epileptic, so was the first Napoleon ; there is 
 every reason for believing Socrates to have been epileptic ; 
 most of us can reckon among our friends or acquaintance 
 men or women of great personal charm, and brilliant 
 faculties, who are epileptic ; for the disease has many 
 manifestations, from an almost unnoticed and unnoticeable 
 momentary suspension of consciousness, to the violent and 
 sometimes protracted convulsions generally associated with 
 the ' falling sickness.' At one time such persons were 
 worshipped as possessing something of a mysterious divinity ; 
 without going to this extreme, we may at least avoid the 
 error of confounding one disease with another, and associat- 
 ing epilepsy with a failure of intellect, as Maxime Ducamp 
 has done. 
 
 It is time to speak of this friend to whom Flaubert owed 
 so much, and so little. His first meeting with P'laubert has 
 already been described ; he at once fell a victim to the 
 fascinations of the glorious giant, and lived in the closest 
 intimacy with him for the remainder of the student days. 
 While he worshipped and admired his friend's superb ability, 
 he to some extent appropriated him, endeavoured to control 
 him, and, with the best intentions in the world, to narrow 
 him down to his own conception of what a literary man 
 should be. All this unconsciously. He was unaware of his 
 own limitations. We are reminded of him in a passage in 
 the Ediwation Sentimentale, in which Flaubert, speaking of 
 a less agreeable character, observes : ' There are some 
 friends, who are never content unless they are forcing their 
 
 c
 
 34 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 friends to do what is displeasing to them."' This apparently 
 was the bias of Maxime Ducamp, and in later years it 
 produced a breach between himself and Flaubert, which was 
 only healed late in the life of the latter. On the other 
 hand, his affection was perfect. On the first opportunity, he 
 gave himself up to attending his friend in his illness ; he 
 undertook the responsible and arduous task of travelling 
 with him for three months in Brittany, when his health was 
 by no means re-established ; and again gladly accepted the 
 same responsibility, for nearly two years, when the East 
 was the scene of their adventures, and for nine years there 
 was no cloud upon their friendship. An adequate oppor- 
 tunity of discussing his literary standpoint will be found 
 later on. 
 
 Li June 1844 Flaubert was able to write the following 
 letter to Louis de Cormenin, one of the Paris band : — 
 
 ' How guilty I must seem to you, my dear Louis ! What can 
 you make of a man who is ill half his time, who is so wearied 
 the other half that he has neither the strength nor the intelli- 
 gence to write even gentle easy things, like the letter that I 
 should like to send you. Do you know weariness ? Not that 
 common vulgar boredom which comes from idleness or ill-health, 
 but that modern weariness which gnaws a man's entrails, and 
 turns an intelligent being into a walking shadow, a thinking 
 apparition. Ah ! I am sorry for you if that leprosy is known 
 to you. Sometimes the sufferer thinks he is cured, but one fine 
 day he wakes up suffering more than ever. You know those 
 coloured glasses with which the summer-houses of retired 
 hatters are adorned ! one sees the country in red, blue, and 
 yellow through them. Weariness is the same. The most 
 beautiful things seen through it take its colour and reflect its 
 sadness. As for me, it is a malady of my youth which comes 
 back on my evil days such as to-day. They can not say of me 
 as of Pantagruel : ' and then he studied an evil half hour, but 
 always had his mind in the kitchen.' It is in something worse 
 that I have my mind : it is in the leeches that they put on me
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 35 
 
 yesterday and that scratch my ears, it is in the pill that I have 
 just swallowed, and which is still a-sailing in my stomach on the 
 glass of water that followed it. 
 
 ' Do you know that we have no cause to be gay ? There is 
 Maxim e gone ; his absence must weigh heavy upon you ; as for 
 me, I have my nerves, which leave me little quiet. When shall 
 we all meet again in Paris in good health, and good temper ? 
 And yet what a fine thing it would be, a little club of good 
 fellows, all sons of art, living together, and meeting once or 
 twice a week to eat a good mouthful, washed down with good 
 wine, and savouring some succulent poet the while ! I have 
 often foi-med this dream : it is less ambitious than many others, 
 but perhaps will not be realised any the more for that. I have 
 just seen the sea, and have returned to my dull town ; that is 
 why I am stupider than ever. The contemplation of beautiful 
 things always makes one sad for a time. One would say that 
 we are made to bear only a certain dose of beauty, a little more 
 fatigues us. That is why mediocre natures prefer the prospect 
 of a river to that of the ocean ; and why there are so many 
 people who pronounce Beranger the first French poet. Do not 
 let us, however^ confound the yawn of the . middle-class man in 
 the presence of Homer with the deep meditation, the intense, 
 almost painful, reverie which comes upon the poet's heart, when 
 he measures the giants, and says to himself in his abasement : 
 O Altitudo ! 
 
 ' For this reason I admire Nero : he is the culminating man of 
 the ancient world. Woe be to him who does not shudder in 
 reading Suetonius! I have recently read the life of Heliogabalus 
 in Plutarch. That man has a beauty diffei-ent from that of Nero. 
 He is more Asiatic, more delirious, more romantic, more aban- 
 doned : it is the evening after the day, madness by torchlight, 
 but Nero is calmer, finer, more ancient, more statuesque, in a 
 word : superior. The masses have lost their poetry since 
 Christianity. Don't speak to me of modern times in the 
 matter of the grandiose. There is not wherewithal to satisfy 
 the imagination of the lowest grade of journalist. 
 
 ' I am delighted to see that you join with me in hatred of 
 Saint Beuve and all his shop. I love before everything the 
 nervous, substantial, clear phrase with swelling muscle, gleaming
 
 36 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 skin ; I like masculine, not feminine, phrases, like those of 
 Lamartine very often, and, in a still lower degree, those of 
 Villemain. The men that I habitually read, my bedside books, 
 are Montaigne, Rabelais, Regnier, La Bruyere and Le Sage. I 
 admit that I adore Voltaire's prose, and that for me his stories 
 have an excellent relish. I read Candide twenty times : I 
 translated it into English, and I have read it over again from 
 time to time. Now I am re-reading Tacitus. In a little time, 
 when I am better, I shall take up my Homer and Shakespeare 
 again. Homer and Shakespeare ! — everything is there ! the 
 other poets, even the greatest, seem small beside them.' 
 
 There are no more letters for nearly a year. Flauberfs 
 melancholy for a time increased ; a boat was bought for 
 him, but he soon ceased to use it, unable to submit himself 
 to the presence of the servant who was ordered to accompany 
 him. 
 
 \\\ 1845, Caroline Flaubert married ; Gustave was in very 
 much better health, and the whole family accompanied the 
 young couple on their wedding trip. Lyons, Marseilles, 
 Genoa, Milan, Geneva, were among the places visited. The 
 journey brought small comfort to Gustave ; his father and 
 he were not of the same opinion as to what things were 
 interesting to see, and what was the most interesting way in 
 which to see them. At Nice he forebore to visit the tomb 
 of Desnoyers, because the step would have appeared comic ; 
 he wanted to see Aigues Mortes, and other places, but did 
 not do so, probably for the same reason. At Genoa, in the 
 Palazzo Doria, however, he saw a })icture of the Temptation 
 of St. Anthony by Breughel, which suggested the work on 
 that subject foreshadowed in the Temptation of Smar.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 CROISSET DEATH THE MIDDLE-CLASS PERSON 
 
 A YEAR before his death, at the beginning of 1845, Pere 
 Flaubert bought a house at Croisset, the first village on the 
 right bank of the Seine below Rouen. In this house his son 
 was destined to spend nearly all his life, and to write all his 
 best work. Those who have a taste for visiting Stratford- 
 on-Avon ; who gape before beds in which Queen Elizabeth 
 has slept ; who do not leave Florence without exploring a 
 ' certain dark narrow street, one of whose houses bears the 
 inscription " Qui nacque il divhio poeta " ;' who sentimentally 
 contemplate the towers of Galileo and Roger Bacon ; who 
 fall on their knees at the gateway of Rydal Mount, and 
 steep themselves in the silences of Grasmere churchyard out 
 of the season ; those persons, in short, who have the passion 
 for shrines, and the instincts of pilgrimage, will be outraged 
 at learning that Croisset is no more, the house has been 
 replaced by a factory, and of all that was associated with 
 the life of Flaubert in that place, nothing remains but a 
 magnificent tulip-tree, which stood in front of his windows. 
 Flaubert himself was a devout worshipper at sacred places : 
 Byron's prison at Chillon, Voltaire's bedroom at Ferney, the 
 birthplace of Victor Hugo at Besan^on, Chateaubriand's 
 castle and grave, the bed of Diane de Poitiers, are some of 
 the altars at which he on different occasions paid his vows. 
 
 37
 
 38 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 But, after all, the room in which a man was born, died, or 
 even worked, does little to change our conception of hnn 
 when that conception is based upon an understanding of his 
 mind. Chalfont St. Giles is a pretty place, but when we 
 have seen it. Paradise Lost is no less majestic ; even if we 
 had the Globe Theatre preserved under a glass case, Hamlet 
 would be no more and no less than Hamlet. Wordsworth 
 never saw the plain slate grave-stone at Grasmere ; and how 
 much of Shakespeare's life remains at Stratford more than in 
 other quiet Midland towns ? To see what the poet has seen, 
 to breathe the air that he breathed, to watch the stately 
 ships move on as he saw them move, hear the laughter from 
 the river as he heard it, to note with him the lamps gleaming 
 upon the water and lending a deeper mystery to most 
 mysterious night, — these are profitable experiences, and these 
 may be felt, though a local cataclysm should swallow up 
 Grasmere, with its lake, its church, and its churchyard, and 
 palatial hotels, and though there is nothing left of the house 
 at Croisset. 
 
 The move to Croisset took place some time in 1845, and 
 was soon followed by disaster. In January 1846, the gene- 
 rous, capable, hard-headed, loving but unsympathetic father 
 died ; and three months later Caroline Flaubert died also, 
 after giving birth to a daughter. Gustave at once wrote to 
 Maxime Ducamp from Rouen, where the family still had a 
 house. Caroline Flaubert had married young Hamard, 
 whom we last saw rotting on the straw of a dungeon. 
 
 'Rouen, March 1846. 
 ' Hamard is leaving my room, where he stood sobbing at the 
 corner of the chimney-piece ; my mother is a weeping statue. 
 Caroline speaks, smiles, caresses us, says gentle affectionate 
 words to all of us, she loses her memory, everything is con- 
 fused in her head ; she did not know whether it was I or
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 39 
 
 Achille who had gone to Paris. What gracefulness there is in 
 the sick, and what strange gestui'es I The child feeds and 
 cries. Achille says nothing, and knows not what to say. 
 What a house ! What a hell ! And I } My eyes are as dry 
 as marble. It is strange. Expansive, fluid, abundant, over- 
 flowing as I feel myself in fictitious sorrow, real griefs stay in 
 my heart, bitter and hard ; they crystallise there, as they come. 
 It seems that Misfortune is upon us, and that she will not go, 
 till she has glutted herself. Once again I am to see the black 
 cloth, and hear the sordid sound of the nailed boots of the 
 undertaker's men descending the stairs. I prefer to have no 
 hope ; on the contrary to enter in that way into the woe that is 
 impending. Marjolin arrives this evening; what will he do.'' 
 Farewell. I had a presentiment yesterday, that, when I saw 
 you again, I should not be gay.' 
 
 ' Croisset, March 1846. 
 
 ' I did not wish you to come here ; I dreaded your tender- 
 ness. I have had enough of the sight of Hamard without 
 seeing you. Perhaps you would have been still less calm than 
 ourselves. In a few days I will summon you, and then I count 
 on you. 
 
 ' It was yesterday at eleven o'clock that we buried her, poor 
 child. They put her wedding di'ess on her, with bunches of 
 roses, immortelles and violets. I spent the whole night watch- 
 ing her. She was straight, lying on her bed in that room, 
 where you have heard her play. She seemed taller and more 
 beautiful than in life, with that long white veil, which went 
 down to her feet. In the morning, when all was finished, I 
 gave her a last kiss in her coffin. I leaned over it, I placed 
 my head in it, and I felt the lead give beneath my hands. It 
 is I who had the cast taken. I saw the coarse paws of those 
 clowns handle her, and cover her with plaster. I shall have 
 her hand and her face. I shall beg Pradier to make me a 
 bust of her, and I shall put it in my room. I have for myself 
 her large striped wrapper, a lock of her hair, the table and the 
 desk at which she used tc "^rite. That is all, all that remains 
 of those we have loved. Hamard would come with us. On 
 arriving in the cemetery, behind whose walls I used to walk in 
 procession with the school, Hamard kneeled on the edge of
 
 40 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 the grave, and scut her kisses througli his tears. The grave 
 was too narrow, the coffin could not sink in. They shook it, 
 pulled it all ways, took a shovel, crowbars, and in the end a 
 grave-digger stepped on it, on the place where the head was, 
 to force it down. I was standing- at the side, my hat in my 
 hand, I threw it away with a cry. 
 
 ' I will tell you the rest face to face, for I could not write all 
 that. I was as dry as a tombstone, but in a state of horrible 
 irritation. I wanted to tell you, what I have just written, 
 thinking to please you. You have enough understanding, and 
 you love me well enough to understand that word " please," 
 which would make a commonplace person laugh. Here we 
 are back at Croisset since Sunday. What a journey ! Alone 
 with my mother and the child which cried ! The last time 
 that I went from there, it was with you, do you remember .'' 
 Of the four, who used to live there two remain. The trees 
 have no leaves yet, the wind whistles, the river is flowing full, 
 the rooms are cold and unfurnished. My mother is better 
 than she might be. She occupies herself with her daughter's 
 child, puts it to sleep in her own room, rocks it, tends it, as 
 well as she can. She tries to make herself a mother again ; 
 will she succeed ? The reaction has not yet come, and I fear 
 it terribly. I am overwhelmed, stupefied ; I might well need 
 to resume my art life, calm and full of long meditation. I 
 laugh for pity at the vanity of the human will, when ], think 
 that it is now six years since I have been wanting to take up 
 my Greek again, and that circumstances are such, that I have 
 not yet reached the verbs. Farewell, dear Max, I embrace 
 you tenderly.' 
 
 A month later he again wrote to Maxima Ducamp. The 
 
 allusion to Novembre is to a romance which he had 
 
 written early in the Paris days, and had read to Ducamp ; 
 
 he destroyed the manuscript along with others in 1870, but 
 
 a fragment survived, and is published in the volume entitled 
 
 Par les champs et par les greves. A wild bit of work in 
 
 his lyrical vein. 
 
 'April 1846. 
 ' 1 have taken a large sheet of paper with the intention of
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 41 
 
 writing you a long letter ; perhaps I shall only send you three 
 lines ; that is as things will turn out. The sky is grey^ the 
 Seine is yellow, the turf is green, the trees have hardly any 
 leaves, they are beginning, it is the Spring, the season of joy 
 and love. " But there is no more spring-time in my heart than 
 on the high road where the bright sun wearies the eyes, where 
 the dust rises in clouds." Do you remember where that comes? 
 It is in Novemhre. I was nineteen years old when I wrote that, 
 six years ago soon. It is strange with how little faith in happi- 
 ness I was born. 
 
 ' I had a complete presentiment of life in my earliest days. It 
 was like a sickly smell of cooking escaping through a ventilator. 
 One has no need to have eaten to know that it will make one 
 sick. I do not complain of that, however ; my last misfortunes 
 have saddened me, but have not surprised me. Without in 
 the least doing away with the sensation, I have analysed them 
 like an artist. This occupation has in its melancholy fashion 
 refreshed my sorrow. If I had expected better things of life, 
 I "should have cursed it ; I have not done that. You would 
 perhaps consider me a heartless man, if I were to tell you, that 
 I do not consider the present condition the most pitiful of all. 
 When I, had nothing to complain of, I thought myself still more 
 to be pitied. After all, that has perhaps to do with practice. 
 By dint of expanding itself to suffering, the soul attains to a 
 prodigious capacity for it ; what once filled it to the point of 
 bursting, now barely covers the bottom of the vessel. I have 
 at least one infinite consolation, a foundation on which I rest ; it 
 is this : I do not see that anything further can happen to me in 
 the way of troubles. There is the death of my mother, which I 
 foresee more or less distant ; but with less selfishness, I ought 
 to summon it for her. Is there any humanity in helping the 
 hopeless ? Have you reflected how we are created for sorrow } 
 Men faint in voluptuous orgies, never in grief ; tears are to the 
 heart what water is to the fishes. I am I'esigned to every- 
 thing, ready for anything ; I have reefed my sails, and wait 
 for the squall, my back to the wind, and my head on my 
 breast. It is said that religious people endure the troubles of 
 this world better than ourselves ; but the man who is con- 
 vinced of the great harmony, who hopes for the annihilation
 
 42 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 of his body at the same time that his soul perhaps will 
 return to sleep in the bosom of the great whole, to animate 
 maybe the bodies of panthers^ or to glitter in the stars, he is no 
 more tormented. The happiness of the mystics has been too 
 much cried up. Cleopatra died as calmly as Saint Francis. 
 I believe that the dogma of a future life was invented by 
 the fear of Death, or the longing to snatch something from 
 him. 
 
 ' Yesterday my niece was baptised. The child, the bystanders, 
 myself, the priest himself, who had just dined, and was all red- 
 faced, did not understand, any of us, what we were doing. 
 Contemplating all these symbols, meaningless for us, I had the 
 feeling of being present at some ceremony of an old world 
 religion dug up out of its dust. It was very simple, and very 
 familiar, and yet I could not get over my amazement. The 
 priest muttered at a gallop Latin, which he did not understand ; 
 we others did not listen; the child held its little bare head 
 under the water, which was poured on it, the taper burned, and 
 the verger responded : Amen ! For certain the most intelligent 
 thing there was the stones, which had formerly understood all 
 that, and which perhaps had retained something. 
 
 ' I am going to set myself to work at last — at last ! I have a 
 longing, I have a hope to fag away immeasurably and for long. 
 Have we laid our finger upon the emptiness of ourselves, of our 
 plans, of our happiness, of beauty, goodness, everything ? I 
 certainly appear to myself very limited, very mediocre. I am 
 acquiring an artistic niceness, which makes me desperate ; I 
 shall end with never writing another line. I think I might do 
 something good, but I always ask myself to what purpose .'' It 
 is the more odd, because I do not feel myself discouraged ; on 
 the contrary, I enter more than ever into the pure idea, the 
 infinite. I breathe there, it attracts me, I become a Brahmin, 
 or rather I am going a bit mad. I have a strong suspicion that 
 I shall not compose anything this summer. If there were any- 
 thing it would be drama ; my oriental story is put off to next 
 year, perhaps to the following, perhaps for ever. If my mother 
 dies, my plans are made ; I sell everything and I go to live at 
 Rome, Syracuse, Naples. Will you follow me ? A little calm, 
 great God ! a little rest ; nothing but that. I do not ask for
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 43 
 
 happiness. You seem to me happy, that is sad. Happiness 
 is a purple mantle with a ragged lining ; when one wants to 
 cover one's self with it, everything flies to the wind, and one 
 remains frozen stiff in those chilly rags one had thought so 
 warm.' 
 
 The letters to Alfred le Poittevin bear a different stamp 
 from those written to other friends. The man himself was 
 something entirely out of the common mould. He died 
 young, having brought no work to light by which he can be 
 judged. As a rule extremely reserved, with Flaubert he 
 expanded ; together they had travelled in the realm of 
 metaphysics, they had studied not merely the rules of 
 thought, and the machinery with which thought should be 
 expressed, they had tried to discover the meaning of the 
 systems in which human thought, relative to the unseen, has 
 from time to time expressed itself. Alfred le Poittevin 
 used to call himself intellectually a Greek of the Lower 
 Empire. Flauberfs distinctive work, the historical analysis 
 of the human mind, which, in two different regions, is the 
 subject of the St. Anthoni/, and of Bouvard et Pecuchet., 
 was the outcome of his comminiion with Alfred le Poittevin. 
 The sound human affection of Maxime Ducamp coimted for 
 much in his life ; for still more, the sympathy with Louis 
 Bouilhet in the matter of literary form, and in a})preciation 
 of the sacredness of letters ; but the sympathy of Alfred le 
 Poittevin touched sj)heres to which neither of these had 
 access. There are not many letters addressed to him, for 
 the reason that he lived close to Rouen, and that the friends 
 often met. 
 
 It is in a letter to him that is first revealed in all its 
 intensity Flauberfs disgust at the commonplace, the middle- 
 class life, with its material preoccupations, its inept ejacula- 
 tions, its self-complacency, smug vices, noisy rant.
 
 44 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' There is now so great an interval between me and the rest 
 of the world that I am sometimes amazed to hear the most 
 natural, the most simple things. The commonest expression 
 sometimes holds me in singular admiration. There are actions, 
 voices, that I cannot get over, and inanities which almost make 
 me reel. Have you ever listened attentively to people who 
 were speaking in a language that you did not understand ? I 
 am at that stage. By dint of wishing to understand everything, 
 everything makes me think. It seems to me, however, that 
 this condition of amazement is not stupidity. The middle-class 
 man, for example, is to me something unlimited. You can't 
 imagine what a treat the " fi'ightful " disaster of Monville has 
 caused me ; to naake a thing interesting, it is enough to con- 
 template it for a long time.' 
 
 The disaster of Monville near Rouen is often alluded to in 
 the correspondence. A destructive water-spout broke over 
 the place. Among* the notes for the continuation of Bouvard 
 et Pecuchet is the following excerpt from Raspail : ' The 
 potato disease was caused by the disaster of Monville. The 
 meteor acted more in the valleys, it withdrew the caloric. 
 It is the residt of a sudden chill,"* 
 
 Alfred le Poittevin married in 1846 a Mile, de Maupas- 
 sant, and the young couple moved from Rouen. Flaubert 
 felt this to be a double desertion ; and it is in this spirit that 
 he writes of the event to Ernest Chevalier, who himself was 
 living in Corsica. The letter concludes : — 
 
 ' My poor mother is always mourning — you have no idea of 
 a grief like hers. If there is a God, one must admit that He is 
 not always in a fit of good-humour. My courage sometimes 
 fails to bear all alone the burden of this great despair that 
 nothing lightens.' 
 
 But he nobly went through with his task notwithstanding. 
 Ducamp writes of him many years later : — 
 
 ' Gustave adored his mother, never left her, lived with her 
 and for her. What he had considered a duty after the death of
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 45 
 
 his fother had become a necessity of his nature ; he felt uneasy, 
 almost unhappy away from her ; I alone know the sacrifices that 
 he made to her, and which he never regretted. This impetuous, 
 imperious giant, flying out at th<^ least contradiction, was the 
 most respectful son, the gentlest, the most attentive that a 
 mother could dream of.'
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 LOVE LOUIS BOUILHET PARODY 
 
 Flaubert spent some weeks of the summer of 1846 in 
 Paris, and in the last days of July met a lady in Pradier*'s 
 studio with whom he corresponded for eight years ; the 
 correspondence was to some extent interrupted during his 
 travels in Brittany in 1847, and his Eastern journey, 1849-51. 
 The lady in question was well known in Parisian literary 
 circles ; she kept a salon where artists and Bohemians met. 
 She was an intimate friend of Victor Hugo, Victor Cousin, 
 and others. She died in 1875, before Flaubert ; and her 
 friends, fortunately for us, restored the letters to his family. 
 She was a married woman living apart from her husband, 
 who died in 1851. 
 
 There are allusions in these letters to a previous love 
 affair. When Flaubert was fourteen he saw at Trouville, 
 and forthwith adored, a lady who appears as Mme. Arnoux 
 in the Education Sentimentale ; this calf-love made a great 
 impression upon him, the more so perhaps that he never 
 revealed it to the object of his affections, though they 
 became friends. It is in these two instances only, that his 
 equilibrium was seriously disturbed by the passion of love. 
 
 'August 4, 1846. Tuesday, midnight. 
 ' Twelve hours ago we were still together ! How distant that 
 is ! At present the night is warm and balmy ; I hear tlie great 
 
 46
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 47 
 
 tulip-tree under my window rustle in the wind, and when I lift 
 my head I see the moon reflected in the river. I have just 
 arranged all alone, and carefully put away, everything that you 
 gave me ; your two letters are in the embroidered satchel ; I 
 am going to read them again, when I have sealed mine. I did 
 not like to take my ordinary note-paper to write to you ; it is 
 edged with black ; let nothing sad ever pass from me to you ! 
 
 ' I would like to talk to you of nothing but joy, and surround 
 you with a calm continuous happiness to pay you a little for all 
 that you have given me open-handed in the generosity of your 
 love. I am afraid of being cold, dry, selfish, and yet, God knows, 
 what is going on in me at this moment ! What a recollection ! 
 What a longing ! Ah ! those two good drives of ours ! How 
 beautiful they were ! The second one especially with the 
 lightning ! I recall the colour of the trees lighted by the 
 lamps, and the swinging of the springs : we were alone, happy. 
 I gazed at your head in the night, I saw it in spite of the dai'k- 
 ness, your eyes lighted up your whole face. . . . 
 
 ' It seems to me that I am writing badly, you will read all this 
 coldly ; I don't say anything that I want to say. My phrases 
 tread on one another like sighs : to understand them you must 
 fill up what separates one from another ; you will do that, will 
 you not .'' My mother was waiting for me at the station ; she 
 wept on seeing me arrive ; you wept on seeing me depart. 
 Our fate is then such that we cannot move ourselves from one 
 place to another without costing tears at either side. That is 
 sombrely grotesque. I find here again the green lawns, the 
 big trees, and the water flowing, as when I went away. My 
 books are open in the same place ; nothing has changed. 
 External nature shames us, she has a calm humiliating to our 
 pride. Never mind, do not let us think of the future, nor of 
 ourselves, nor of anything ! To think is the way to suffer. 
 Let us allow our hearts to go before the wind, as long as it will 
 fill the sail ! Let it carry us, as it pleases, and as for the cliffs 
 — on my word — so much the worse ! We shall see. Farewell. 
 Farewell.' 
 
 'August 7, 1846. 
 
 ' Since we have told one another that we love, you ask me 
 whence comes my reservation, that I do not add, " for ever."
 
 48 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 Why ? The reason is that I divine the future ; that the 
 antithesis continually rises before my eyes. I have never seen 
 a child without thinking that he will become an old man, nor 
 a cradle without thinking of a grave. The contemplation of a 
 woman makes me dream of her skeleton. That is why merry 
 sights make me sad, and mournful spectacles affect me little. 
 I weep too much inwardly to shed tears outwardly; a story 
 read moves me more than a real misfortune. When I had a 
 family, I often wished not to have one, to be freer, to go and 
 live in China, or with savages. Now that I have none, I miss 
 it, and cling on to the walls, where its shadow still remains. 
 Other men would be proud of the love which you lavish upon 
 me, their vanity would drink there at its ease, and their male 
 self-esteem would be flattered by it to its most intimate folds ; 
 but it only makes my heart faint with sadness, when the 
 moments of excitement are passed; fori say to myself: '^ she 
 loves me, and I who love her too, do not love her enough. If 
 she had never known me, I should have spcired her all the tears 
 that she sheds." 
 
 ' You think that you will always love me, child ! always ! 
 What presumption in a human mouth ! You have loved before 
 now, have you not ? as I have ; do you remember that then too 
 you said "^for ever" ? 
 
 ' But I am tormenting you, vexing you. . . . Never mind, I 
 prefer to disturb your happiness now rather than to exaggei'ate 
 it coldly, as they all do, so that its loss hereafter may make you 
 suffer more. . , . Who knows } Perhaps you will thank me 
 later for having had the courage not to be more tender. Ah ! 
 if I had lived at Paris, if all the days of my life could have been 
 passed with you ! yes, I would let myself go with the stream 
 without crying for help. I should have found in you a daily 
 satisfaction for ray heart and head, that would never have 
 wearied me. But separated, destined to see one another but 
 rarely, it is frightful, what a perspective ! and yet what is to be 
 done? I cannot conceive how I managed to leave you. That is 
 just me, that is ! That is just my pitiful nature ; were you not 
 to love me, I should die of it ; you do love me, and I am for 
 writing to you to stop. I would have liked to pass into your 
 life like a fresh stream, which would have cooled the thirsty
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 49 
 
 banks, and not like a ravaging torrent ; the memory of me 
 should have made your flesh quiver, and your heart smile. Do 
 not ever curse me ! There — I shall have loved you veiy much 
 before I cease to love you. For my part — I shall always bless 
 you ; your image will remain for me suffused with poetry and 
 tenderness, as was last night's sky in the milky vapours of its 
 silvery mist. This month I will come to see you, I will be with 
 you one big whole day. I owe you a frank explanation about 
 myself to reply to a page of your letter, which shows me 
 the illusions that you have with regard to me. It would be 
 cowardly of me to let them last longer, and cowardice is a vice 
 which disgusts me under whatever aspect it appears. 
 
 ' Whatever they say, the bottom of my nature is the mounte- 
 bank. In my childhood and in my youth I had a mad love of 
 the boards. I should perhaps have been a great actor if Heaven 
 had willed me to be born poorer. And now what I like above 
 everything is form, provided that it be beautiful and nothing 
 more. Women, whose hearts are too ardent and minds too 
 narrow, do not understand this religion of beauty, this abstrac- 
 tion of sentiment. They must always have a cause, an end. I, 
 for my part, admire tinsel as much as gold. The poetry of the 
 tinsel is even superior, in that it is sad. For me there is nothing 
 in the world except beautiful verses, well turned, harmonious, 
 resonant phrases, glorious sunsets, moonlight, coloured paintings, 
 antique marbles, and shapely heads. Beyond that, nothing. I 
 would sooner have been Talma than Mirabeau, because he lived 
 in a sphere of purer beauty. Caged birds stir my compassion as 
 much as enslaved peoples. In all politics there is only one 
 thing that I understand, revolt. Fatalist as a Turk, I believe 
 that all that we may do for the progress of humanity, or any- 
 thing else, comes to absolutely the same thing. As for this 
 " progress," my understanding is a bit obtuse for things that 
 are not quite clear. All that has to do with that way of 
 talking fatigues me immeasurably. I hate the modern tyranny, 
 because it seems to me stupid, feeble, and timid in itself, but I 
 have a deep admiration for the ancient tyranny, which I regard 
 as the finest manifestation of man. I am before everything the 
 man of fancy, caprice, inconsequence. Some day I shall live 
 far from here, and more will be heard of me. As for what
 
 50 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ordinarily touches men the most nearly in the matter ol 
 physical love, I have always separated it from the other. I saw 
 you laugh at that the other day in relation to B. . . . that was 
 my own story. You are certainly the only woman that I have 
 loved. 
 
 ' I loved one from the age of fourteen to twenty without 
 telling her, without touching her ; and I was nearly three years 
 after that without being aware of my sex. At one time I 
 thought I should die, so I thanked Heaven for it. You are the 
 only woman that I have ventured to wish to please, and perhaps 
 the only one that I have pleased. Thank you, thank you. 
 But will you understand me to the end, will you bear the 
 weight of my weariness, my whims, my caprices, my despairs, 
 and my violent reactions .'' You tell me, for example, to write 
 to you every day, and if I do not you will scold me. Well — the 
 idea that you expect a letter eveiy morning will prevent me 
 from writing it. Let me love you after my own fashion, in the 
 manner of my being, with what you call my originality. Force 
 me to nothing, and I will do everything. Understand me and 
 don't accuse me. If I judged you to be frivolous and silly like 
 other women I would pay you with words, promises, oaths. 
 What would that cost me .'' But I prefer to remain below, 
 rather than above my heart's truth. 
 
 ' The Numidians, Herodotus says, have a strange custom. 
 They burn the skin of their heads with coal when they are 
 quite small, so that they may afterwai-ds be less sensitive to 
 the action of the sun, which is devouring in their country. So 
 of all people in the world it is they who are the healthiest. 
 Think that I have been brought up in Numidia. Would it not 
 have been poor sport to have said to them, " You feel nothing, 
 the sun itself does not warm you ! " Oh, do not be afraid ! 
 there may be a hard skin somewhere on my heart, but it is 
 none the less good.' 
 
 Though these letters are given in the order in which they 
 were written, all are not given ; only those in which a new 
 string seems to be touched, and which therefore throw addi- 
 tional light on Flauberfs character ; or those which are in 
 themselves intrinsically beautiful.
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 51 
 
 'August 12, 1846. 
 
 ' You would inspire a dead man with love. How then do you 
 wish me not to love you ? You have a power of attraction to 
 make the stones stand up at your voice. Your letters move me 
 to my inmost parts. Fear not then, that I shall forget you. 
 You know well that natures like youi's are not left, those 
 emotional, moving, deep natures. I am angry with myself, 
 I could beat myself for having caused you pain. Forget every- 
 thing that I said in Sunday's letter. I had addressed myself to 
 your male intelligence, I believed that you would know how to 
 abstract yourself from yourself, and understand me in your 
 heart. You have seen too many things, where there was not so 
 much ; you have exaggerated all that I said to you. Perhaps 
 you beheved that I was posing, that I was giving myself out 
 for the Anthony of a small theati'e. You treat me as a 
 Voltaii-ian, and materialist. God knows, however, if I am. 
 You also speak to me of my exclusive tastes in literature, which 
 ought to have made you divine what I am in love, I am 
 searching in vain for what all that means. I don't understand 
 a word of it. On the contrary I admire eveiything in my 
 heart's good faith ; and if I am worth anything at all, it is in 
 virtue of this pantheistic faculty, and also of that harshness 
 which has wounded you. Come, don't let us talk any more of 
 it. I was wrong, I was a fool, I did with you what I have 
 done at other times with my best loved ones, I showed them 
 the bottom of my bag, and the bitter dust which flew out of it, 
 made them choke. How many times without meaning it have 
 I not made iny father weep ! He so intelligent, so acute ! 
 But he understood nothing of my way of speech. He like 
 you, like the othei-s. I have the infirmity of having been born 
 with a special language to which I alone have the key. I am 
 not vmhappy at all, I am not surfeited with anything, everybody 
 thinks me of a very gay character, and never in my life do I 
 complain. At the bottom I do not think myself much to be 
 pitied, for I envy nothing, and I want nothing. There — I will 
 not torment you any more, I will touch you gently, like a child 
 that one is afraid of wounding, I will draw back into myself 
 the prickles which come out of me. With just a little good- 
 will even the porcupine does not always hurt. You say that I
 
 52 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 analj^se too much, I think that I do not know myself enough ; 
 every day I discover something new in me. 1 travel in myself 
 as in an unknown country, although I have traversed it a 
 hundred times. You are not grateful to me for my frankness 
 (women want to be deceived, they force you to it, and if you 
 resist, they blame you). You tell me that I did not show 
 myself like that at first : on the contrary, recall your recollec- 
 tions. I began by showing you my wounds. Recall all that I 
 said to you at our first dinner ; why you cried out youi-self : 
 " So you excuse everything ! There is no longer either good or 
 evil for you." No, I have never lied to you, I loved you 
 instinctively, and I did not deliberately make up my mind to try 
 and please you. That all happened because it had to happen. 
 Laugh at my fatalism, add that I am something late in being a 
 Turk, Fatalism is the Providence of evil, it is the Providence 
 that we see, I believe. 
 
 ' The tears that I find on your letters, those tears caused by 
 me, I would like to buy them back again by so many drops of 
 blood. I am furious with myself, it increases my disgust for 
 myself. Were it not for the idea that I please you I should 
 hold myself in hori'or. For the rest, it is always so ; we make 
 those whom we love suffer, or they make us suffer. How is it 
 that you reproach me with this phrase : " I would wish never to 
 have known you ! " I know of nothing more tender. Would 
 you like me to supply the parallel to that ? It is the phrase 
 that I uttered on the eve of my sister's death, uttered like a cry, 
 and which revolted everybody. There was a talk of my mother. 
 " If she could only die ! " As it appears, that sort of thing is 
 not fashionable, and seems either odd or cruel ; what the devil 
 is one to say when one's heart is full to bursting } 
 
 ' Ask yourself whether there are many men who would have 
 written you that letter which hurt you so much. Few, I think, 
 would have adopted that style, that com})lete self-abnegation. 
 Please tear up that lettei*, my love, don't think any more of it, 
 or read it over again from time to time, when you feel yourself 
 strong. Come — laugh ! To-day I am merry, I don't know why, 
 the sweetness of your letters of this morning passes into my 
 blood. But don't spin me any more commonplaces such as this: 
 that it is money that has prevented me from being happy ; that
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 53 
 
 if I had worked I should have been better off ; as if to be an 
 apothecaiy's apprentice, baker, or wine-merchant were enough 
 to prevent one being bored in this world ! That has all been 
 said to me too often by a crowd of commonplace people for me 
 to wish to hear it in your mouth, it spoils it ; your mouth was 
 not made for that. But I thank you for approving of my 
 literary silence. If I have anything new to say, when the time 
 comes it will be said of itself. Oh ! how I should like to write 
 great works to please you, how I should like to see you quiver 
 at my style, I who have no desire for fame (and more sincerely 
 than the fox in the fable) ; I would like to have it for you, to 
 throw it to you like a bouquet, that it might be a caress the 
 more, and a soft bed in which your mind might spread itself 
 when it thought of me. You say I am handsome ; I would 
 like to be handsome, to have black curls Mling over my ivory 
 shoulders like the Greek youths ; I would like to be strong, 
 pure ; but I look at myself in the glass, and think that you love 
 me, and discover myself to be revoltingly commonplace. 
 
 ' I have hard hands, bowed knees, and a narrow chest. If I 
 had only had a voice, if I knew how to sing, I would modulate 
 those long aspii-ations, which now have to pass away in sighs ! 
 If you had known me ten years ago, I was fresh, perfumed, 
 breathing life and love ; but now I see my maturity bordering 
 on decay. >*- *t 
 
 ' I regret all my past, it seems to me that I should have kept 
 it in reserve, in an attitude of waiting, to give it to you when 
 the time came. But I never suspected that any one could love 
 me, it still seems to me something outside nature — Love for me ! 
 How comic it is ! and, like a spendthrift who wants to ruin 
 himself in a day, I have given all my riches, small and great.' 
 
 From the next letter we see that the lady had begun to 
 send verses ; she was by way of being a poetess, and the 
 curious may still discover her published works. To the lover 
 these verses naturally appeared full of every charm. They 
 were accompanied by a portrait of the lady herself, a proof 
 of an engraving which was published in some Parisian book 
 of beauty ; and with all Flaubert^s aversion to falsehood and
 
 54 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 hypocrisy, he found it necessary to invent a half truth to 
 account to his mother for his possession of the portrait, 
 which the good mother indeed judged to be pretty, repre- 
 senting a countenance animated, open, and good. 
 The letter concludes : — 
 
 ' I read this morning some verses from your volume with a 
 friend who came to see me. He is a poor fellow who gives 
 lessons here to earn his bread, and who is a poet, a i-eal poet, 
 who does splendid, charming work, and who will remain 
 unknown because he is in want of two things ; bread and 
 leisure. Yes, we I'ead you, we admired you.' 
 
 The poet in question was Louis Bouilhet, who lived with 
 Flaubert in the closest friendship till his death in 1867 ; the 
 nature of this friendship may be felt through the following- 
 passage which concludes Flaubert's preface to a posthumous 
 volume of his friend's poems : — 
 
 ' And since to everything a moral is demanded, here is mine : 
 Are there anywhere two young fellows who spend their Sundays 
 reading the poets together, telling one another what they have 
 done, the plans of the works they would wish to write, the 
 similes that have occurred to them, a phrase, a word ; — and 
 who, though despising all besides, conceal this passion with a 
 virgin's modesty, I give them this advice : — 
 
 ' Go side by side in the woods declaiming verses, mingling 
 your soul with the sap of the trees, and the eternity of master- 
 pieces, lose yourselves in historic dreams, in consternation in 
 the presence of the sublime ! spend your youth in the arms of 
 the Muse ! Her love consoles for the loss of other loves, and 
 replaces them. 
 
 ' At last, if the incidents of life when once perceived, seem 
 to you ti'ansposed, as if for the purpose of an illusion to be 
 described, so that all things, your own existence included, shall 
 seem to you to have no other utility, if you are resolved to face 
 any outrage, ready for any sacrifice, armed against every trial, 
 launch yourselves, publish!
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 55 
 
 ' Then, whatever may happen, you will see the pitifulness of 
 your rivals without indignation, and their fame without envy ; 
 for the less favoured will console himself by the success of the 
 more fortunate ; the one whose nerves are strong will support 
 the comrade who loses heart, each will bring to the common 
 stock his particular acquisitions; and this reciprocal control 
 will prevent pride, and defer decadence. 
 
 ' Then when one has died — for the life was too beautiful — let 
 the other preserve his memory as a precious possession to make 
 him a bulwark against baseness, a resource in weakness, or 
 rather as a domestic oratory, to which he will repair to murmur 
 his sorrows and empty his heart. How many times in the night 
 will he, casting his eyes into the darkness behind that lamp, 
 which used to shine on the two heads, vaguely seek for a 
 shadow, ready to ask it : " Is it so .'' What am I to do .^ Tell 
 me " — and if this memory is the everlasting food of his despair, 
 it will at least be a companion in his solitude.' 
 
 Louis Bouilhet we have already seen with Ernest Chevalier, 
 a school friend of Flaubert. He was born at Cany, a small 
 village outside Rouen ; his father had been a military 
 surgeon ; his maternal grandfather, an active-minded man, 
 who corresponded with Voltaire, Turgot, Condorcet, lived 
 to be nearly a hundred. Bouilhet was a year younger than 
 Flaubert, and unlike Flaubert carried off' all the prizes at 
 school, ' although the very reverse of what is called " a good 
 boy," — the term applied to mediocre natures, and to a modera- 
 tion of character, which was rare at that time."' 
 
 Among the little group of lads before mentioned, whose 
 exalted imaginations led them to strange excesses, Bouilhet 
 was the elegiac poet, the singer of ruins and moonlights. 
 This phase was succeeded by a republican fervour ; in his 
 twentieth year he all but joined a secret society. After 
 taking his degree he had to decide upon a profession, and 
 selected that of medicine. He became a resident student, 
 assistant house-surgeon, with the elder Flaubert. He had
 
 56 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 inherited a small income from a godfather ; this he generously 
 handed over to his mother and two sisters, and supported 
 himself by giving private lessons to young persons who 
 experienced a difficulty in passing examinations. As this 
 coaching work occupied the greater part of his days, night 
 duty at the infirmary fell to him more often than to any 
 other student. Many of his best early verses were written 
 in the wards of the hospital ; indeed he would write verses 
 anywhere, and was never without a note-book in which the 
 inspiration of the moment could be jotted down. Like his 
 friend, he was physically a fine man, — elegantly built, tall, 
 robust, with a flood of golden curls. In 1846, on the death 
 of Pere Flaubert he definitely abandoned medicine, and took 
 exclusively to ' making bachelors of arts."' After 1848 his 
 faith in republicanism and interest in politics vanished. It 
 was in May 1846 that his closer intimacy with Flaubert 
 began ; he used to arrive at Croisset on Saturday evening or 
 Sunday, and stay till Monday morning. ' Part of the night 
 was spent in reading over the week's work. What hours of 
 expansion ! Endless cries, exclamations, arguments for or 
 against the retention of an epithet, reciprocal enthusiasm.'' 
 Bouilhet was a superb Latinist, and familiar with all classical 
 literature, Greek no less than Latin. Though extremely 
 shy, blushing under a look, uncomfortable in a drawing- 
 room, he understood no nonsense when a literary question 
 arose; he supported his convictions with energy and wit, 
 and had a formidable power of sarcasm. 
 
 At this time Flaubert was amusing himself with a careful 
 study of the tragedies of Voltaire and Marmontel. Maxime 
 Ducamp asks — to what purpose ? One outcome of the study 
 was a parody, — ' a tragedy according to the rules, with the 
 three unities, and wherein nothing would ever be called by 
 its right name."' Flaubert, Bouilhet, Ducamp spent hours
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 57 
 
 together over this burlesque, which was never published, nor 
 indeed finished. A few verses however have been preserved. 
 The plot and subject came from Flaubert, but none of the 
 verses ; he never wrote a verse in his life that would scan, 
 or a couplet that would rhyme. 
 
 The subject of the tragedy was ' Jenner, or the Discovery 
 of Vaccine."' The action took place in the palace of Gonnor, 
 prince of the Angles ; the stage represented a colonnade 
 ornamented M'ith the spoils of the conquered Caledonians. 
 A sawbones, pupil of Jenner, and jealous of his master, 
 played the principal ])art in the piece. Materialist and 
 atheistic, fed on the doctrines of Holbach, Helvetius, and 
 Lamettrie, he foresees the French Revolution, and predicts 
 the accession of Louis Philippe. The other heroes were 
 outlined on those of Marmonters tragedies. The small-pox, 
 personified as a monster, appears in a dream to the young- 
 princess, the daughter of the virtuous Gonnor. A sentinel 
 is suddenly seized by the unknown malady ; which Jenner, 
 ' eldest son of iEsculapius,' is to succeed in curing ; the 
 patient writhes with pain, for 
 
 * The flowers of high iEtna, the snows of the Alps 
 Contend for his senses. ' 
 
 An attendant maiden offers him a glass of sweetened 
 water with a little orang-e-flower : — 
 
 * This juice so delicious expressed from the cane 
 Which is melted in water, and sent us from Spain, 
 Thus mingled with perfumes hrought hither in ships 
 From the far western islands may moisten your lips.' 
 
 The remedy fails ; the sentinel still raves ; they then 
 propose to go and fetch him the instrument with which 
 Moliere pursued M. de Pourceaugnac, and which, in the lips 
 of the young Caledonian maid, becomes : — 
 
 * The tortuous tube from whence health gushes forth.'
 
 58 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 In another place Jenner^s official hat is described^as 
 
 'The majestic liead-piece 
 That oi'iiament stately whose mother is Cireece. ' 
 
 While a woman, whose face Avas so pitted with small-pox 
 as to resemble a skimmer, is thus nobly delineated : — 
 
 ' I have seen a maiden whose gentle aspect 
 Caused my horrified eyes on the spot to detect 
 A resemblance to tliat thousand-pierced machine, 
 Armed with which the good matron may often be seen, 
 To remove from the brim of her vessels of clay 
 The foam of the juices those vessels convey.' 
 
 In such pleasant fooling as this Flaubert and Bouilhet 
 settled slowly down to their lifelong work ; the one began 
 the first edition of Saint Anthony, the other a poem with a 
 Roman subject, Melaenis.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE PATH OF LOVE NOT SMOOTH LETTER TO MRS. TENNAXT 
 
 Meanwhile, the correspondence with the Parisian poetess 
 continued ; it had lasted little more than a fortnight, when 
 ' the cliffs "* appeared on the horizon. The lady began to 
 urge her admirer to come to Paris, to live there permanently 
 with her ; she was not altogether satisfied with his absorbing- 
 admiration of the beautiful in art ; nor could she understand 
 why, loving her so much, he should still remain in attend- 
 ance on his mother. 
 
 ' You are always speaking to me of your sorrows ; I believe 
 in them^ I have seen the proof of it, I feel it in myself, wliich 
 is better. But I see another sorrow, a son*ow which is there by 
 my side, and which never complains ; — which even smiles, and 
 in comparison with which, yours, immense though it may be, 
 will never be more than a rash compared to a burn, a convul- 
 sion beside an agony. There is the vice in which I am caught. 
 The two women, that I love best, have passed a bit with two 
 reins into my heart, by which they hold me, pull me altei'nately 
 by love and pain.' 
 
 A recommendation to read the morning papers met with 
 no very encouraging response : — 
 
 ' I don't care about news ; politics bore me, I loathe periodi- 
 cals ; the whole business makes me dull or furious. You speak 
 to me of an earthquake at Leghorn, Even if I were to open 
 my mouth over that and emit the phrases of consecrated usage 
 
 59
 
 60 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 under sucli circumstances : " It is veiy tiresome ! " " What a 
 frightful disaster ! " " Is it possible ? " " Oh, good God ! " will 
 that itestore life to the dead, -wealth to the poor ? In all that 
 there is a hidden meaning that escapes us, which we do not 
 imderstand, and doubtless a superior utility, as in the wind and 
 rain ; because our melon frames have been broken by the hail, 
 must we wish to suppress hurricanes ? Who knows but what 
 the wind that brings down a roof, opens up a whole forest? 
 Why should not the volcano which destroys a town fertilise a 
 province ? 
 
 ' I regret that Phidias (Pradier) is not coming. He is an 
 excellent fellow and a great artist ; yes, a great artist, a real 
 Greek, and the most ancient of all the moderns, a man who does 
 not concern himself with anything, neither with politics, nor 
 socialism, nor Fourier, nor the Jesuits, nor the University, who 
 is there like a good workman with his sleeves tucked up doing 
 liis business from morning till evening, with the wish to do it 
 well, and the love of his art. Everything is there, in the love 
 of art. But I stop, — that irritates you again : you do not like 
 to hear me say that I concern myself more about a verse than a 
 man, and that I am more grateful to the poets than to the saints 
 and heroes.' 
 
 Within a month jealousy had declared itself; the object, 
 a model of Pradier"'s ; and then there was always the standing 
 jealousy of the lady of Trouville. Under the circumstances 
 the following confidence was scarcely discreet : — 
 
 ' You make a very true remark ; love is a great comedy, and 
 life also, when one does not take a pai't in it ; only I do not 
 admit that it is laughable. Nearly eighteen months ago I 
 made this experience in a living subject, that is to say that the 
 expei'ience was there ready made. I used to visit a house where 
 there was a daughter, charming, wonderfully beautiful, of a 
 beauty altogether Christian and .almost Gothic, if I may say so ; 
 she had a simple mind inclined to devotion, she wept and 
 laughed turn in and turn out, as rain succeeds sunshine and 
 sunshine rain ; I moved this beautiful heart with my words at 
 my pleasure, the heart in which there was nothing that was not
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 61 
 
 pure. I see her still reclining on her rose pillow and looking 
 at me, as I read, with her wide blue eyes. One day we were 
 alone, sitting on a sofa, she took my hand, passed her fingers 
 into mine ; I let her do it without thinking of anything at all ; 
 for 1 am very innocent at most times, and she looked at me 
 with a look which still makes me shudder. 
 
 ' Her mother came in just then, she understood it all and 
 smiled. I am sure that the poor little thing had given way to 
 a moment of irresistible tenderness, one of those swoons of the 
 soul in which it seems that everything in you melts and dissolves 
 — a voluptuous pain, which would be full of rapture were one 
 not I'eady to burst into sobs or melt into tears. You cannot 
 imagine the impression of tei*ror that I felt ; I went back home 
 quite upset, and reproaching myself for living ; I do not know if 
 I exaggerated the thing to myself, but I, who did not love her, 
 I would have given my life to redeem that sad look of love to 
 which mine did not respond.' 
 
 After this, one is not surprised that the next letter begins 
 with reproaching a temporary lull of four days in the 
 correspondence. It continues : — 
 
 ' You would like me to know Beranger ; so I should. His is 
 a great nature which touches me. But in speaking of his works 
 there is one great misfortune, and that is the class of his 
 admirers. There are enormous geniuses who have only one 
 defect, one vice, that is of being felt above all by vulgar minds, 
 hearts open to light poetry. For three years Beranger has 
 been solacing the loves of students, and the sensual dreams of 
 bagmen. I know that he does not wi'ite for them, but these 
 are the people who feel him above all others; and it is all 
 very well talking, but the populai'ity which seems to exjiand 
 his genius, vulgarises it, because the really beautiful is not 
 for the masses, above all in France. . . . For my own special 
 consumption those that I like the best, ai'e the geniuses a little 
 less agreeable to handle, more contemptuous of the people, 
 more retired, more haughty in their ways and tastes ; or 
 perhaps the only man who can replace them all — my old 
 friend Shakespeare, upon whom I am going to start again from
 
 62 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 one end to the other, and not to leave him this time till I have 
 his pages at my fingers' ends. When I read Shakespeare^ I 
 become greater, more intelligent, purer. Arrived at the 
 summit of one of his vi^orks I seem to be on a high mountain, 
 everything disappears, and everything appears, one ceases to be 
 a man, one becomes an eye, new horizons rise, the perspective 
 is prolonged to infinity, one does not think that one has lived 
 thus in those cabins, that are hardly distinguishable, that one 
 has drunk at all those rivers, v^^hich look smaller than brooks, 
 in a word that one has moved in that ant-hill and made part of 
 it. I once wrote in a moment of happy pride, which I should 
 be veiy glad to recover again, a phrase that you will under- 
 stand. It was of the joy caused by reading great poets. It 
 seemed to me at times that the enthusiasm they caused me 
 made me their equal, and lifted me to their level ! Come, you 
 are still vexed about what I said to you on the subject of the 
 St. Sylvestre. I said that just simply to divert you. I have 
 very little perspicacity in relation to you, as it appears. My 
 science collapses before women, it is true that they are a 
 chapter in which the next line always proves to you, that you 
 understood nothing whatever of the preceding one.' 
 
 Through a cousin, the adored one discovered the place of 
 residence of the Trouville lady, somewhere in America, and 
 Flaubert proposed to make use of this channel to transmit a 
 letter to the ancient object of his affections, which was first 
 to be read by the present divinity. In the letter in which 
 this proposal was made, the following sentence occurs : — 
 
 'No, I would like to make of you something quite apart, 
 neither friend nor mistress, that is too restricted, too exclusive, 
 one does not love one's friend enough, with one's mistress one is 
 too silly. It is the middle term that I seek, the essence of these 
 two mingled sentiments,' 
 
 In spite of this flattering statement the suggestion proved 
 not altogether acceptable, and the reply to it elicited the 
 following response : —
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 63 
 
 ' Wednesday, 9 p.m. October 1, 1846. 
 
 '"Frankly, speak to me frankly." That is your expression; 
 and at the same time you say you want me to spare you, you 
 accuse me of being brutal, and you do everything you can to 
 make me more so. For a man of common sense it is at once a 
 strange and curious thing the art that women exert to force you 
 to deceive them, they make you hypocritical in spite of yourself, 
 and then they accuse you of having told lies, of having betrayed 
 them. Ah well ! no, my poor darling, I will not be more 
 explicit than I have been, because it seems to me that I cannot 
 be. I have always told you all the truth and nothing but the 
 truth. 
 
 ' If I cannot come to Paris as you wish, the reason is that 
 I must stay here. My mother needs me, the least absence 
 makes her uneasy, her grief imposes a thousand unimaginable 
 tyrannies upon me ; what would be nothing for others is for 
 me much. I cannot send people marching who entreat me with 
 sad faces and tears in their eyes. I am as feeble as a child, 
 and I give way because I do not like reproaches, entreaties, 
 sighs. 
 
 ' Last year, for example, I went sailing in a boat every day, I 
 ran no risk in it, because, apart from my good seamanship, I am 
 an unusually strong swimmer ; well, this year she took it into 
 her head to be anxious ; she did not ask me not to betake 
 myself any more to this exercise, which is for me, especially at 
 the time of high tides as now, full of charm : I cut the wave 
 which wets me as it falls back on the flanks of my bark, I let 
 go my sail, which shivers and flaps with joyous movement, I 
 am alone, without speaking, without thinking, given up to 
 the furies of nature, and rejoicing in feeling myself at her 
 mercy ; well, she said nothing to me on the subject, but none 
 the less I have put the whole apparatus away in the attic, and 
 there is not a day on which I do not wish to take it out again ; 
 I do nothing of the kind ; to avoid certain allusions, certain 
 looks, that is all. In the same way for ten years I concealed 
 the fact of my writing, in order to spare myself a possible 
 raillery. 
 
 ' I should want an excuse to go to Paris — what excuse ? On 
 the following journey another, and so on. Having nothing but
 
 64 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 myself that attaches her to life my mother is all day after 
 worrying her head about the possible misfortmies and accidents 
 that may happen to me. When I want anything, I do not ring, 
 because if that happens, I hear her running all breathless up 
 the stairs to come and see if I am not ill ; and so I am obliged 
 to go down myself, and look for wood, when mine is out, for 
 my tobacco when I want to smoke, my candles, when my own 
 are used up. Yet again, my poor soul, I assure you, that if I 
 could, not go to Paris, but live there with j^ou, or at any rate 
 near you, I would do so. But , . . alas ! . . . alas ! 
 
 ' I remember that about ten years ago one holidays we were 
 at Havre, my fether heard there, that a woman whom he had 
 known in his youth, when seventeen years old, was living there 
 with her son, then an actor in the theatre at that town ; he 
 took it into his head to go and see her again. This woman, a 
 celebrated beauty in her native place, had formerly been his 
 mistress ; he did not do as many middle class people would 
 have done, he did not conceal the fact, he was too lofty for 
 that ; he went then to pay her a visit, my mother and we 
 three remained on foot in the street waiting for him — the 
 visit lasted nearly an hour. Do you think that my mother was 
 jealous, or that she felt the smallest annoyance on the subject } 
 Not a bit of it, and yet she loved him, loved him as much 
 as a woman ever has been able to love a man, and that, not 
 only when they were young, but to the very last day after a 
 union of thirty-five years. Why do you wound yourself in 
 anticipation about a word of remembrance that I intend to 
 send to Madame X ? I do more than my father, for I make 
 you a third in our conversation, — which takes place across 
 the Atlantic. 
 
 ' Yes, I wish you to read my letter, if I write one, if you wish 
 it, if you understand beforehand the sentiment which leads me 
 to do so. You think that in this there is some want of delicacy 
 towards you, I should have thought the contraiy — I should 
 have seen in it a more than ordinary mark of confidence. I 
 give you my whole past, and that irritates you ; I say to you : 
 ' here, see — that is what I did love, and it is you that I do 
 love ! ' That hurts you ! On my honour it is enough to make 
 a man go out of his mind.'
 
 LIFE OF GUSTA\^ FLAUBERT 65 
 
 After this, the letter ends amicably ^nth sentimental 
 allusions to some hours spent together at ]\Iantes, 
 
 About this time the follo-n-ing letter was written to Miss 
 Grertrude Collier (aftenvards Mrs. Tennant) : — 
 
 ' Shall I never see you again ? Is your departure really 
 determined on ? But why do you not go by way of Rouen ? 
 That road would take you the quickest, and I should be able 
 to say Good-bye to you. If you are dismal at leaving Paris, 
 so am I at yom- departure. I shall never be able to see 
 your poor house again ^vithout a heartache. There are now 
 a crowd of places on the earth, where my soul bleeds when 
 I pass. All is leaving me ; my relations die, my friends go 
 away. Nothing remains to me of all that but the memorj' ; 
 yours will always remain dear to me. I shall never forget 
 those long afternoons that I used to go and spend at Rond- 
 Point, our happy readings, our endless talks. When I was 
 living in that dismal Rue de I'Est, I used to promise myself 
 my days of visiting you like holidays ; at that time those were 
 my best moments, and in my last stay in Paris with what 
 pleasure did I not carry myself back to that pleasant vanished 
 past ! We laughed again there then, do you remember it ? 
 For me, that journey made between the deaths of my father 
 and sister, has left in my thoughts as it were, the memory of 
 an hour of rest between two hiuxicanes, and then, how should 
 I not think of you all with tenderness, you are mixed in so 
 many things of my inner life .'' I knew you at Trou\dl]e in the 
 times when we were all there. I have kept for myself the 
 striped red and blue wrapper that Henrietta used to wear, and 
 which she gave Caroline. 
 
 ' VTho knows when I shall see you again, and if I ever shall 
 see you again? I misti-ust all happiness more than ever, I 
 have dark misgivings about the future, and besides, if I see you 
 all again, doubtless all will be changed. I do not say that you 
 will forget me : I do really believe in your friendship, but I 
 have a distrust of time, see you.'' of time, which rots everything, 
 like the rain, which gnaws the hardest marbles, and the most 
 soUd feelings, . . . You will be married perhaps, so many things 
 will have arisen ! May heaven make you happy, Gertnide ! 
 
 E
 
 66 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 That is my deepest prayer. If I did not think that you esteem 
 me too much to ask of me the conventional phrases on this 
 occasion, I would send you a crowd of common-places which 
 I spare you, but you know what I am to you. . . . Farewell — 
 Farewell — "entirely yours." (This is not a formula.)' 
 
 Apparently our Parisian friend kept no letters that reached 
 her between the 20th of October and the 22nd of December 
 1846, for the next one is of the latter date, and written at 
 four o'clock in the afternoon ; in spite of Maxime Ducamp''s 
 assertion that Flaubert dated his letters, if at all, only by 
 the day of the week — a statement which, by the way, is 
 partially true. 
 
 ' To deny the existence of gloomy sentiments, because they 
 are gloomy is to deny the sun so long as it is not mid-day ; 
 truth resides as much in the half-tones as in the violent 
 contrasts. I had in my youth a real friend, who was devoted 
 to me, who would have given his life and his money for me, but 
 he would not have got up half an hour earlier, he would not 
 have accelerated any one of his movements to please me. When 
 we observe life with a little attention we see the cedars less tall 
 and the reeds taller. 
 
 ' Still, I do not like the habit that certain people have 
 adopted, of bringing down the great enthusiasms and diminish- 
 ing the exceptionally sublime. Accordingly, de Vigny's book. 
 Military Servitude and Greatness shocked me a little at first, 
 because I saw in it a systematic depreciation of blind devotion 
 (of the adoration of the Emperor, for instance) of man's 
 fanaticism for a man, to the benefit of the dry abstract idea of 
 duty, an idea which I have never been able to grasp, and which 
 does not seem to me inherent in human entrails. It is the 
 adoration of the Emperor that is beautiful in the Empire, a love 
 exclusive, absurd, sublime, thoroughly human ; that is why I 
 fail to understand what is the meaning for us to-day of the 
 Fatherland. I clearly grasp what it was for the Greek who 
 had only his town, for the Roman who had only Rome, for the 
 savage that one hunts down in the forest, for the Arab whom 
 one chases to his tent. But as for us, do we not at bottom feel
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 67 
 
 ourselves as much Chinese or EngHsh as Fi-ench ? Do not all 
 our dreams go abroad ? As children we wish to live in the 
 country of parrots and preserved dates, we grow up with Byron 
 or Virgil, we covet the East on our rainy days, or perhaps we 
 wish to go and make our fortune in the Indies, or exploit sugar- 
 cane in America. The earth is our Fatherland, the Universe, 
 the stars, the air, thought itself, that is to say, the infinite in 
 our breasts ; but the quarrels of people with people, of canton 
 with district, of man with man, interest me little, and only 
 amuse me when they make great pictures with red back- 
 grounds.' 
 
 Young people who believe in inspiration, in long spells of 
 work ' when the fit takes them," in burning the midnight oil, 
 and the candle at both ends, would do well to ponder on the 
 following piece of advice addressed to the same person as the 
 last letter. 
 
 ' You have been ill ! Do not give way to any more of those 
 excesses in the matter of work, which exhaust, and by reason of 
 that fatigue which they entail, make you lose more time in the 
 end than you have gained ; it is not the big dinners and great 
 ox'gies that nourish, but a regular, systematic diet, 
 
 ' Work patiently every day an equal number of hours, adopt 
 the habit of a studious and calm life, in the first place you will 
 find a great charm in it, and in the second you will gain strength. 
 I too, have had the mania for spending nights without sleep, 
 which leads to nothing but exhaustion. 
 
 ' You should iToistrust everything which resembles inspiration, 
 for that is often nothing more than a deliberate determination 
 and forced excitement, voluntarily caused, and which did not 
 come of itself ; besides we do not live in inspiration; Pegasus 
 walks more often than he gallops, genius consists in showing 
 how to make hiin take the pace we require, but for that 
 pui-pose, we must not force his stride, as they say in the riding 
 schools, we must read much, think much, always be concerned 
 with style, and write as little as possible, simply to calm the 
 irritation of the idea, which must needs take a form, and which 
 turns and turns in us, till we have found it an exact, precise
 
 68 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 form ; observe that we arrive at producing beautiful things by 
 dint of patience, and protracted effort ; control the violent 
 workings of your mind, which has already made you suffer so 
 much ; fever destroys the intellect, anger has no overpowering 
 force, it is a Colossus whose knees totter, and which wounds 
 itself more than others.'
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 TOUR IN BRTTTAXy STYLK 
 
 The correspondence with Ernest Chevalier, still in Corsica, 
 was not dropped. Maxime Ducamp had succeeded, early in 
 1847, in getting Madame Flaubert to consent to an expedition 
 into Brittany, which was to begin on the 1st of May and 
 last three months ; she had seen the necessity of giving 
 Gustave some complete change ; and he wrote to inform his 
 old friend of the fact. The letter concludes : — 
 
 * There is nothing new here. Everything goes on in the old 
 lines. My mother always sad. The child walks, lives and cries. 
 My lord Alfred is at Neuville, not doing much, and still the 
 same being that you knew, and the citizen of Rouen is always 
 something gigantically overwhelming and pyramidally inane. 
 For the rest, I hardly ever see any of them, but it is none the 
 less humiliating to reflect that one breathes the same air.' 
 
 The Breton expedition did get accomplished. Maxime 
 Ducamp has given an account of it in his Souvenirs 
 Litteraires, and the two friends wrote a description of it in 
 alternate chapters. The portions written by Flaubert have 
 been published since his death ; those that proceed from the 
 hand of Ducamp are for the present in a state of prudent 
 suppression ; the complete copy of the work has probably 
 since his death been deposited in some public library, 
 whose identity is for the present veiled from us. ' Once we
 
 70 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 had the idea of publishing it under the title chosen by 
 Flaubert, Par les Champs et par les Grcves. We recoiled 
 before the necessity of corrections. Under pretext of being 
 humorous, and that nothing should be softened down, we 
 had softened so little, that we had softened nothing. We 
 had emptied our bag of nonsense, which was fully furnished. 
 The book is aggressive, touches on everything, proceeds by 
 digressions, speaks of the right of domiciliary visits in con- 
 nection with Notre Dame d'Auray, of the Chamber of Peers 
 in talking of the battle of the Thirty, attacks men and 
 books, reduces the human ideal to a literary ideal, mixes 
 lyrical exaltation with satire, if not invective, and was made 
 to remain what it is : a manuscript in two copies. '' 
 
 Shade of Flaubert ! ' Reduces the human ideal to a 
 literary ideal ! ' 
 
 It seems that the indiscretions of this volume must rest 
 chiefly with Maxime Ducamp, for there is nothing so very 
 terrible in the published work of Flaubert. 
 
 The friends travelled in the only way in which travelling 
 is really delightful : knapsack on back, independent of 
 hotels, and public conveyances of all sorts. Brittany was 
 then more foreign to France than even Cardiganshire to 
 England ; passports had to be examined ; and the misgivings 
 of Custom-house officials to be encountered. Mere travellers 
 were naturally objects of suspicion. 'A custom-house officer 
 submitted us to a formal inquiry and searched our knap- 
 sacks. He was a little put out of countenance : with a 
 coaxing air he said to us under his breath : " All the same, 
 tell us who you are." Flaubert whispered to him : " A 
 secret commission." We were going down towards Morbihan, 
 when the Custom-house officer caught us up out of breath. 
 " Tell the King not to come here," said he ; " the country is 
 not safe, there are still chouans.'''' '
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 71 
 
 Flaubert was not always a comfortable fellow traveller. 
 ' Between Ploermel and Josselin, at the Halfway Oak, 
 Flaubert suddenly cried, " Beaumanoir drink thy blood ! " 
 Then rememberino; the lord of Tintemar and the " childe " 
 Bembro, he tried to deliver a blow with his stick on my 
 knapsack, which I received on the arm. I begged him to 
 hit less hard, and he replied : " You are only middle-class 
 after all, you don't understand the fight of the Thirty ; I 
 think it prodigious." Near Mont St. Michel, on the islet of 
 Tombelaine, where Montgomery fortified himself, he wanted 
 to represent the tournament of the twenty-ninth of June 
 1559 ; as the part of Henry the Second would have been 
 reserved for me, I refused. Flaubert said to me : " Ah ! — 
 one can easily see that you do not care about history ! " 
 Were we mad ? It is quite possible.'' 
 
 But these sufferings were small compared with those 
 inflicted upon poor Ducamp by the 'young phenomenon.'' 
 At a fair at Guerand the travellers came upon a man who 
 was showing a monstrosity — or a pair of monstrosities — for 
 authorities differ on this point. According to Ducamp, the 
 * young phenomenon '' was a sheep with five legs and a stiff 
 tail ; according to Flaubert there Avere two, — a cow and a 
 sheep, 'wearing one arm, four shoulders'" as the showman 
 stated. Flaubert fell in love with the ' young phenomenon''; 
 made much of the showman ; would have him to dine, when 
 he got abominably drunk ; encouraged him to write to King- 
 Louis Philippe ; declared that he would make his fortune. 
 For days the joke lasted. He could talk of nothing but the 
 ' young phenomenon ' ; would stop in the middle of the road 
 and exhibit poor Ducamp, in the style of the showman, to 
 the trees and hedges as the ' young phenomenon."' At Brest 
 he encountered the ' young phenomenon '' again, who had 
 united his, or their, forces with a dancing bear, some per-
 
 72 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 forming dogs, a donkey — whose business it was to be baited — 
 and a pack of fighting mongrels. Again the hospitaHties of 
 Flaubert proved too much for the sobriety of the showman. 
 
 A year later, Maxime Ducamp was lying ill at Paris, 
 having been wounded in the tumults of '48 ; he was one day 
 disturbed by hearing a strange confusion of sounds on his stair- 
 case, — pushing, struggling, bleating, suppressed explosions. 
 Suddenly the door flew open, and Flaubert appeared : 'Gentle- 
 men, allow me to introduce to you the " young phenomenon ""; 
 it is three years old, has been approved by the Academy of 
 Medicine, and been honoured by the presence of several 
 crowned heads."* Flaubert had discovered his old friend at 
 a fair in some part of Paris, and spent a hundred francs for 
 the pleasure of this private exhibition. When Flaubert was 
 tickled by anything that amused him extremely, he let 
 nobody off"; he repeated his joke with roars of gigantic 
 laughter to anybody and everybody. If you failed to perceive 
 the humour of the situation, he became extremely angry and 
 called you ' a middle-class person,"" his most contemptuous 
 term of abuse. 
 
 Among Flaubert"'s descriptions and reflections in Par les 
 Champs et par les Greves^ the following are noteworthy in 
 the admirer of the ' young phenomenon "* : — 
 
 * A singular charm breathes from these humble churches. It 
 is not their poverty that moves us, for one would say that they 
 are inhabited, even when no one is present in them. Is it not 
 rather their modesty that enraptures ? For with their low 
 belfries, their roofs hiding under the trees, they seem to make 
 themselves small, and humiliate themselves beneath God's great 
 sky. Indeed they have not been built from any motive of 
 pride, or from a pious whim of some great one of the earth in 
 his agony. On the contrary we feel that tliey are the simple 
 expression of a need, of the honest cry of a desire, and like the 
 shepherd's bed of dry leaves, they are the shelter that the soul
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 73 
 
 has made to stretch itself at ease in its hours of fatigue. These 
 village churches in a greater degree than those of towns, have 
 the air of belonging to the character of the country which bears 
 them, of sharing more in the life of the families, who from 
 father to son, come to the same spot, there to place their knees 
 on the same stones. Every Sunday, every day, coming in and 
 going out, do they not see and see again the graves of their 
 relatives, whom they thus have near them at their prayers, as at 
 a larger home from which they are never quite absent ? These 
 churches then have a sense of a harmony which, enclosed 
 between the baptistry and the graves, completes the life of 
 these men. It is not so with us, who driving eternity beyond 
 the walls, exile our dead to the suburbs to lodge them in the 
 knacker's quarters in the midst of chemical works, and beside 
 artificial manure stores.' 
 
 Again, talking of the Lady Chapel of Pont L'^Abbe : — 
 
 ' Man brings here all the sensuality of his heart, suppressed 
 by the climate, starved by poverty, and deposits it at the feet 
 of Mary under the eyes of the divine woman, and thus satisfies 
 and excites his inextinguishable thirst for enjoying and loving. 
 The rain may come in through the roof, there may be neither 
 forms nor chairs in the nave, none the less you will eveiywhere 
 find this chapel of the Virgin shining, scrubbed, neat with fresh 
 flowers and burning tapers. There the whole religious tender- 
 ness of Bidttany seems to concentrate itself; there is the softest 
 comer of her heart, her weakness, her passion, her ti-easure. 
 There may be no flowers in the fields, but there are some in the 
 church ; man is poor, but the Virgin is rich ; ever beautiful, she 
 smiles for you, and souls in pain go to warm themselves at her 
 knees as at a hearth that never cools. We are astonished at 
 the earnestness of the people in its beliefs; but does one 
 know all the delight, all the joy that they give, all the pleasure 
 that is drawn from them ? Is not asceticism a superior Epicur- 
 eanism, fasting the refinement of good living ? Religion has in 
 it almost carnal sensations ; prayer has its debauchery, morti- 
 fication its raptures, and the men who come in the evening to 
 kneel before this dressed statue feel thei*e, too, heart -beatings 
 and wild intoxication, while in the streets the children of the
 
 74 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 town coming back from school, stop thoughtful and awe- 
 stricken to look at the woman glowing in the window who 
 gazes down upon them with her gentle eyes.' 
 
 At St. Malo the friends visited the tomb of Chateau- 
 briand, placed on the precipitous side of a small island in 
 the bay facing the west. 
 
 'There he will sleep, his head turned to the west, in the 
 tomb built on a cliff, his immortality will be like his life, 
 deserted of all and surrounded by storms. The waves with 
 the centuries will long murmur round this great monument ; 
 they will spring to his feet in the tempests, or in the summer 
 mornings, when the white sails are spread and the swallow 
 comes from beyond the seas, long and gentle, they will bring 
 him the voluptuous melancholy of distances, and the caress of 
 the open air. And the days thus slipping by, while the 
 billows of his native beach shall be for ever swinging between 
 his birthplace and his tomb, the heart of Rene, cold at last, will 
 slowly crumble into nothingness to the endless rhythm of that 
 eternal music' 
 
 Louis Bouilhet once said of Flaubert, ' There is a curse 
 upon him ; the man is a lyric poet, and cannot write a verse.' 
 In reading such passages as the above we feel the lyrical 
 tendency, and since Flaubert has left no verses behind him, 
 will do wisely to accept the remainder of Bouilhet\s state- 
 ment. 
 
 In the same volume in which these poetical fragments 
 occur there is an equally poetical description of a slaughter- 
 house ; and there can be no doubt that Flaubert would 
 have protested that the Breton churches, the tomb of 
 Chateaubriand, the low quarters of Brest, and the slaughter- 
 house, were alike worthy of the artist's pen and pains ; that 
 the description of a disembowelled ox is neither more nor 
 less artistic, provided it be well executed, than the descrip- 
 tion of a fine man stepping out of the sea after a bathe, or
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 75 
 
 of a castle which has been the home of one of the makers of 
 romance. 
 
 At this period of his Hfe, and at times during all his life, 
 Flaubert was undoubtedly contrary ; he deliberately said 
 and wrote things which he knew would be shocking to 
 others, but which were not shocking to himself. In this 
 there was a certain amount of temper ; the man felt himself 
 to be what he was, large-hearted, affectionate, brave, honest, 
 unselfish and pure, but he was not conventional ; that is to 
 say, he did not accept as final the inconsistent, fluctuating 
 and yet dogmatic views of the society in which he lived, on 
 questions of morality and questions of taste. He was a 
 citizen not only of the world in which he lived, but of all the 
 world that has ever been. Aristophanes and Horace were 
 not to him books more or less well printed and bound in 
 calf ; they were men — living men, honest men, good men — 
 men Avho lived in great times, and played a great part in 
 those times ; the best specimens of two epochs, when men 
 were abnormally active. It seemed to him far less impure 
 to talk as they talk, or as Falstaff talks in the Merry Wives 
 of Windsor, than to be a smug citizen of Rouen, applauding 
 the government for protecting morality, and at the same 
 time slily sniggering in coffee-houses about the gay life that 
 is led by students at Paris. There is nothing more pitiful 
 than the conventional morality of the nineteenth centiu-y. 
 It is the age of whitewash ; and, what is worse, the age of 
 double entente. The coarsest statement, the grossest act, 
 are less demoralising than the dainty allusion, the veiled but 
 not hidden vice. All this Flaubert felt, and at the same 
 time saw, that it was not universally felt even by his intimate 
 friends. Further, on many subjects he was predisposed to 
 be less delicate than other people through having been the 
 son of a hard-working enthusiastic surgeon, and accustomed
 
 76 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 from his earliest youth to the talk and the sight of the 
 dissecting room. He and his sister, before they were ten 
 years old, used to peep through a window and watch their 
 father at work. A surgeon, moreover, will speak to you of a 
 well-executed dissection as a beautiful thing, beautiful in 
 the artistic sense ; and he is right ; the horror with which 
 ordinary humanity regards the dissecting table is a weakness 
 the result of ignorance ; while the curiosity that is begot of 
 this horror is none the less unwholesome. 
 
 A man who deliberately thinks, says, and publishes what 
 is impure to himself, is, from every point of view, artistic as 
 Avell as moral, indefensible ; but it is quite possible to have 
 an entirely different atmosphere from that of the world in 
 Avhich one lives ; to see more and more plainly. This was 
 eventually Flaubert''s case ; he eventually came to write what 
 was repellent to people of narrow experience, without being 
 aware of the fact ; was dismayed, aggrieved, when he dis- 
 covered what he had done. On the other hand, it is difficult 
 to acquit him of having allowed himself to be influenced, in 
 the earlier period of his life, by a reaction against the nerve- 
 less propriety of the middle-class man. The easy optimism 
 of frivolous persons, ready to accept any formula which 
 acquits them of the necessity of thinking for themselves, was 
 a red rag to Flaubert. He saw the world full of sorrow as 
 well as of joy; he saw that the innocent often were brought 
 down and in misery, while the guilty flourished ; and he 
 became furious with indignation when other people, to 
 excuse their slothfulness or cowardice, refused to open their 
 eyes to obvious facts. For this reason he invariably rejoiced 
 in the discovery of baseness in the great ones of the earth, 
 revelled in scandals by which spotless characters were 
 suddenly discovered to be inwardly tainted. Such things 
 were so many documentary proofs that this is not the best
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 77 
 
 of all possible worlds, but a world of conflicting forces, in 
 which good and evil are strangely and inexplicably mingled, 
 and in which even the best people act under the influence of 
 mixed motives. 
 
 Flauberfs health was much benefited by the tour in 
 Brittany ; on the day of starting he was seized with one of 
 his ' attacks of nerves,** as he was in the habit of calling them, 
 and never again during the three months that the holiday 
 lasted. 
 
 Immediately on the return from Brittany, the two friends 
 set to work to write their book. Flaubert describes the 
 process, in a way which becomes only too familiar as each 
 successive work is brought into the world with even greater 
 difficulty than its predecessor. 
 
 'You ask me for information about our work, Maxima's and 
 mine ; you must know then that I am driven wild by writing ; 
 style, which is a thing that I take veiy much in earnest, agitates 
 my nerves hon-ibly. I vex myself, I prey on myself, there are 
 days when I am quite ill from it, and when I am feverish at 
 night. The further I go on the less capable I find myself of 
 expressing the idea. What a quaint mania it is to pass one's 
 life wearing oneself out over Avords, and sweating all day long 
 over arranging sentences ; there are occasions, it is true, when 
 one rejoices hugely, but this pleasure is bought at the cost of 
 how much discouragement and bitterness .'' To day, for example, 
 I have spent eight hours in coiTCcting five pages, and I think 
 that I have worked well ; judge of the rest ! it is pitiful. What- 
 ever happens I will finish this work, which in its veiy object is a 
 hard bit of exercise, then next summer I will see about tempting 
 Saint Anthony. If that does not go from the very beginning, I 
 have done vnth style for several long years. I will go in for 
 Gi'eek, history, archaeology, anything, in short everything easier. 
 For I often think the useless trouble, I give myself, stupid.' 
 
 In another passage he compares his difficulties with style 
 to those of a man ' who has a correct ear and who plays the
 
 78 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 violin out of tune, his fingers refuse to produce exactly the 
 sound of which he is conscious, " Then the tears flow from 
 the eyes of the poor scraper, and the bow falls from his 
 fingers."" *" 
 
 Every now and then Flaubert was compelled to breathe 
 the same air as the citizens of Rouen at close quarters. Here 
 is a description of such an occasion : — 
 
 ' I have recently seen something fine, and I am still over- 
 powered by the grotesque and at the same time mournful 
 impression Avhich this spectacle has left upon me. I have been 
 present at a reform dinner ! What taste ! What cookery ! Wliat 
 wines ! and what speeches ! Nothing has given me a more 
 complete contempt for success, than the contemplation of the 
 price at which it is obtained. I remained cold with the nausea 
 of disgust in the midst of the patriotic enthusiasm which was 
 stirred by " the helm of the state " — " the abyss into which we 
 are drifting" — "the honour of our flag" — "the shadow of our 
 standards " — " the fraternity of peoples/' and other cakes of the 
 same meal. Never will the finest works of the masters receive 
 the fourth part of that applause; no book of de Musset will 
 ever cause such cries of admiration to be uttered as came from 
 all parts of the room to greet the virtuous bellowings of 
 M. Odilon Barrot, and the lamentations of M. Cremieuse on the 
 state of our finances. And after a session till past nine o'clock 
 in front of cold tui'key, sucking pig, and in the company of my 
 locksmith, who patted me on the shoulder at the fine passages, 
 I came away chilled to the entrails. However dismal one's 
 opinion of men may be, bitterness rises in one's heart when 
 such delirious inanity is flaunted before you, such a tangle of 
 imbecility. In nearly all the speeches there was laudation of 
 Beranger. How this good Beranger is ill-used ! I owe him a 
 grudge for the adoration which the middle-class minds bestow 
 on him. There are people of great talent who have the 
 misfortune to be admired by the small natures ; bouilli is 
 disagreeable because it is the basis of small housekeeping; 
 Beranger is the bouilli of modern poetry; everybody can eat 
 of it, and like it.'
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE DEATH OF ALFRED LE POITTEVIN 
 
 During the spring of 1848 it became clear that the days of 
 Alfred le Poittevin were numbered. Flaubert and Ducamp 
 went to visit him at Neuville ; they found him ' marching 
 gaily to death,' the victim of an incurable disease of the 
 heart. At parting he asked Ducamp to send him a copy of 
 Spinosa from Paris. 
 
 On the third of April 1848 Flaubert wrote the following 
 letter to Ducamp : — 
 
 ' Alfred died on Monday at midnight ; I buried him yesterday. 
 I watched him for two nights ; I wrapped him in his winding 
 sheet, I gave him the kiss of farewell, and I saw his coffin 
 soldered. I spent two long days thei*e ; while watching him I 
 read Kreutzer's Religions of Antiqtdty. The window was open, 
 the night was superb, one heard the cock crow, and a moth 
 fluttered round the candle. I shall never forget all that, nor 
 the appearance of his face, nor the first night, at midnight, the 
 distant sound of a hunting horn which came to me through the 
 forest. On the Wednesday I went for a walk all the afternoon 
 with a bitch that followed me uncalled. This bitch had taken 
 a fancy to him and always accompanied him when he went out 
 alone. The night before his death she howled horribly and 
 could not be silenced. I sat down on the moss in several 
 places, I smoked, I looked at the sky, I lay down behind a mass 
 of broom tufts and I slept. 
 
 'The last night I read Autumn Leaves; I always pitched upon 
 the pieces that he liked the best, or that had for me a bearing 
 
 79
 
 80 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 upon the present. From time to time I went to lift the veil 
 which had been put over his face to look at him. I was 
 wrapped in a cloak^ which had belonged to my father, and 
 which he only wore once, on the day of Caroline's wedding. 
 When the day appeared, towards four o'clock, the watcher and 
 I began our work. I lifted him, turned him round and enfolded 
 him. The impression of his cold, stiff limbs remained all day in 
 my finger ends. He was dreadfully decomposed, we put two 
 sheets upon him. When he had been thus arranged he was like 
 an Egyptian mummy enclosed in its bandages, and I felt, I 
 cannot tell you what a sentiment of joy and liberty for him. 
 The mist was white, the forest began to show in outline on the 
 sky, the two torches blazed in the dawning whiteness ; birds 
 sang, and I i-epeated to myself that phrase of his Belial. 
 
 ' " He will go, happy bird, to salute the rising sun amid the 
 pine trees " : or rather I heard his voice saying it to me, and the 
 whole day I was deliciously possessed by it. They placed him 
 in the hall ; the doors were taken off their hinges and the great 
 air of the morning came in with the coolness of the rain that 
 had begun to fall. He was carried by men to the cemetery ; 
 the journey lasted more than an hour. Following behind I 
 could see the coffin swing with the movement of a boat that is 
 pushed on rollers. The sei'vice was atrocious in its length. At 
 the cemetery the earth was moist ; I approached the edge of 
 the grave and watched the pellets fall one by one ; it seemed 
 to me that there fell a hundred thousand. 
 
 ' To return to Rouen I mounted on the box with Bouilhet ; 
 the rain fell heavily; the horses went at a gallop, I shouted 
 to urge them on ; the air did me worlds of good. I slept all 
 that night, and I may say all to-day. 
 
 ' That is what I have lived on since Tuesday evening. I had 
 unheard of perceptions and inexpressible whirls of ideas ; a 
 heap of things came back to me with choirs of music and clouds 
 of perfumes. 
 
 ' Up to the time when it was impossible for him to do any- 
 thing, he used to read Spinosa till one o'clock in the morning, 
 every night in bed. On one of the last days when the window 
 was opened and the sun came into the room, he said : " Shut 
 it ; that is too beautiful, too beautiful."
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 81 
 
 'There were moments, dear Max, when I had singular 
 thoughts of you, and made sad comparisons of images. Fare- 
 well, I embrace you, and I have a strong wish to see you, for I 
 want to tell you things incomprehensible.' 
 
 Thus did the soul of Flaubert find temporary consolation 
 in description. He never forgot, never ceased to regret, 
 Alfred le Poittevin.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE ST. ANTHONY 
 
 From April 1848 to May 1849 there is a gap in the corre- 
 spondence. At this time Flaubert was working hard at the 
 St. Anthony, and his health had failed again. Maxime 
 Ducamp, with whom he corresponded throughout this period, 
 having suppressed the letters, we have no information at first 
 hand. 
 
 Early in 1849 Ducamp determined to carry out a project 
 which he had long formed : to travel for two or three years 
 in the East. He wished to take Flaubert with him, Flaubert 
 who had dreamed all his life of ' stirring the sands of Syria 
 with his own feet,"" of riding on camels and elephants, of 
 watching the sunset behind the pyramids, of bathing in the 
 Ganges, and making a pilgrimage to Ceylon, 'which the 
 ancients called Taprobana ; what a name ! Taprobana !' The 
 mother reluctantly consented ; she could not resist the 
 representations made by a man of such high medical 
 authority, so old a friend, as Dr. Jules Cloquet. The period 
 of departure was fixed for the time when the Temptation 
 should be finished. Ducamp patiently waited, and when the 
 appointed epoch arrived — the autumn of 1849 — before 
 departing to the land of his dreams, Flaubert read his work 
 to Ducamp and Bouilhet; up to that time they had been 
 entirely ignorant of the nature of the treatment which he 
 would give to his subject ; he had refused to confide his plan 
 
 82
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 83 
 
 to them till the whole was finished ; then he would read the 
 complete work. 
 
 Early in the autumn Flaubert wrote to Ducamp, 'the 
 Temptation is finished, come ! ' Ducamp started at once for 
 Croisset ; found Bouilhet already established there ; and the 
 reading began. It lasted four days ; eight hours a day ; 
 from mid-day till four in the afternoon ; from eight in the 
 evening till midnight. At the beginning, Flaubert waving 
 the pages above his head, cried : ' If you do not utter howls 
 of enthusiasm, the reason is, that nothing is capable of 
 moving you."" 
 
 For two-and-thirty hours the friends listened in silence ; 
 at the end of each reading Madame Flaubert used to inquire, 
 ' Well ? ■* and they had no reply to make. Before the last 
 sitting Ducamp and Bouilhet conferred privately; they 
 determined to give their opinion frankly, without reserve ; 
 the question of Flaubert's literary future was at stake. 
 
 ' That evening, after the last reading, towards midnight, 
 Flaubert tapping on the table said : " Now, it is with the 
 three of us, tell me frankly what you think." Bouilhet 
 replied : " We think you ought to throw it into the fire and 
 never speak of it again." *■ 
 
 A conversation followed, which lasted till eight oVlock in 
 the morning ; Flaubert at last, conquered rather than con- 
 vinced, gave way. St. Antliony was not burned but con- 
 signed to a drawer. As the friends left the room Maxime 
 Ducamp thought he saw the flutter of a black dress trailing 
 on the staircase, and that it was Madame Flaubert, whose 
 maternal love had driven her to listen for the end of the 
 conference. He gratuitously assumes that she came to the 
 conclusion that the friends were jealous of her son. 
 
 In 1869, after the publication of Salammbo, Flaubert 
 again took up the St. Anthony/, and again put it aside;
 
 84 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 in 1876 lie started afresh ; and this time the work was 
 pubHshed. 
 
 Though the piibHcation of the St. Antliony belongs to the 
 end of Flaubert's life, its creation, the influences under which 
 it was composed, belong to the beginning of his career ; and 
 though the work that we have is considerably reduced in 
 bulk from that to which Ducamp and Bouilhet listened in 
 silence for two-and-thirty hours, its merits and defects are 
 obviously the same. 
 
 The Temptation of St. Antliony is a succession of dissolv- 
 ing views, a pageantry of rich fancies, in which all the fables 
 that have haiuited the human brain take shape, and are 
 marshalled before the mystified saint. 
 
 The scene opens at sunset ; the holy man is watching the 
 departure of the great planet from a platform on the side of 
 a mountain in the Thebaid. In one direction he sees the 
 fertile level valley of the Nile, and the mighty river shining- 
 like a lake on the horizon ; in the other the desert stretches 
 its monotonous billows of yellowish grey to the feet of the 
 Libyan mountains, whose outlines are slightly softened by 
 violet mists ; in the intervening space floats a fine dust of 
 gold melting in the vibrations of light. 
 
 St. Anthony expresses disgust with life ; reviews the past, 
 and regrets the past content. Night comes ; a wedge-shaped 
 flight of swift-winged birds passes overhead ; he wishes he 
 could follow them. In the vague whiteness of the night 
 appear pointed noses, upright ears, gleaming eyes; there is 
 a sound of moving gravel. St. Anthony advances ; it is a 
 troop of jackals, they skurry off", all except one ; the saint 
 would like to stroke him, but the animal makes off*; again the 
 bitterness of solitude. The stars appear, and on the platform 
 falls the shadow of a great cross ; the saint withdraws into 
 his hut and reads the Scriptures ; he begins to wonder by
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 85 
 
 what power Jesus resisted the temptations of the devil, and 
 Solomon those of the Queen of Sheba. The former clearly, 
 because he was God, the latter because he was a magician ; 
 what a sublime science is magic ! As the saint allows his 
 imagination to dwell on it, the shadow of the cross changes 
 its forms; the amis become two horns ; St. Anthony horrified, 
 calls to heaven for help, and the shadow resumes its original 
 shape. The saint rises; again his past triumphs recur to 
 him ; he thinks he sees a procession winding its way to the 
 mountain, possibly a wealthy female penitent coming to ask 
 for comisel ; he hopes it may be so, calls out and gives 
 directions as to the path ; echoes answer him, and he 
 distinguishes other voices, as if the air were speaking, which 
 offer him the love of women, wealth, military glory, popu- 
 larity, rest, satisfied vengeance. Then things change ; the 
 palm-tree at the edge of his platform becomes the gigantic 
 bust of a Avomaii leaning over the abyss ; phantoms float past 
 him, showing against the night like scarlet paintings on ebony ; 
 terrified, fatigued, exhausted, the saint falls upon his mat. 
 
 Then there appears upon the earth a vast shadow, more 
 subtile than other shadows, with uncertain edges ; it is the 
 Devil leaning on the roof of the hut with huge bat wings 
 outspread, under which nestle the seven deadly sins. 
 St. Anthony dreams that he is floating away in a boat on 
 the flowery Nile ; he wakes, is thirsty, finds his pitcher 
 broken; is hungry, the jackals have taken his loaf; then 
 there arises before him the image of a rich banquet ; he 
 recognises the wile of the Tempter ; but even as he con- 
 gratulates himself upon his deliverance, he stumbles over a 
 metal cup. He lifts it ; coins pour from it, jewels, infinite 
 wealth ; he flings himself upon the heap of riches ; finds 
 nothing ; seizes his knife ; it slips from his hand ; he falls 
 against the side of his cabin in a trance.
 
 86 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 He is transported in the spirit to Alexandria, to Con- 
 stantinople, where the Emperor places his own diadem upon 
 him ; he finds himself in a hall where a king feasts with his 
 courtiers ; the king is Nebuchadnezzar ; Anthony watches 
 him and reads his thoughts, they become his own thoughts ; 
 he is himself Nebuchadnezzar, disgusted with the abject 
 crowd of flatterers who surround him; he longs to wallow in 
 baseness, to degrade before men the object of their fears; 
 he flings himself on all fours on the table, and bellows like 
 a bull. He has fallen in his own cabin, and wakes. 
 
 Horrified at the sinful vision he implores pardon, and 
 inflicts penance ; while he is still vigorously scourging 
 himself, and to his dismay finding pleasure in the blows, the 
 procession of the Queen of Sheba arrives. She offers him all 
 that the heart of man can desire, or imagine it desires, 
 including her love. He rejects her. When she has dis- 
 appeared, St. Anthony discovers a strange figure squatting at 
 the threshold of his cabin ; it proves to be Hilarion, his 
 former pupil, who gives Anthony a flattering description of 
 his own life ; the saint becomes uplifted with pride of 
 intellect; Hilarion dexterously takes advantage of this 
 weakness to insinuate the scientific baselessness of his faith, 
 reproaches him with his idleness in not studying its origins ; 
 he takes a pen from his belt, and, with a roll of papyrus 
 in his hand, prepares to take down the words of wisdom 
 that drop from Anthony's lips. The saint maintains the 
 authority of Scriptia-e ; Hilarion points out its contradic- 
 tions ; Anthony longs for wider knowledge, and Hilarion 
 leads him into a vast hall in which all the heresies are 
 disputing. The heresiarchs pass in turn before Anthony, 
 their attendants behind them practising the rites of their 
 particular heresy. First comes the ]irophet Manes, en- 
 throned, with his ninety-five disciples around him, all
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 87 
 
 gleaming with oil, thin and very pale ; the Priseillanians, 
 who believed that the Devil created the world ; Valentinians, 
 who declared it to be the work of a God in delirium ; the 
 Carpocratians ; the Nicolaitans ; the Messalians, who held 
 work to be sinful ; the Paternians, who thought that the 
 inferior parts of the body were made by the Devil, and 
 therefore eat, drink, and debauch themselves. 
 
 Tertullian strides in, clothed in a Carthaginian mantle, 
 and denounces the heresiarchs ; reveals their previous history. 
 All flee, and in the place of Tertullian is seen a beautiful 
 woman ; it is Priscilla, the prophetess, the companion of 
 Montanus ; close to her appears Maximilla, his other 
 companion, eventually Montanus himself. Follow the 
 Arcontics in hair shirts, the Tatianians in garments of reeds, 
 the Valesians, who emasculate themselves ; the Cainites, 
 who worship Cain, and Judas, by whose agency the death of 
 Christ was brought about, and the consequent Redemption. 
 Then a tumultuous band clothed in wolf-skins, wearing 
 crowns of thorns and armed with clubs, rush in ; they are 
 the Circoncellions, who wish to reduce everything to one 
 dead level of ruin. The hall is filled with tumult ; after a 
 while, peace is restored, and Arius is heard disputing with 
 Sabellius ; all the heretics take part in the discussion, they 
 vaunt again and again to Anthony their martyrs, their 
 ecstasies, their prayers, their raptures ; they brandish before 
 him their gospels : the gospel of the Hebrews, the gospel of 
 the Lord, the gospel of Thomas. 
 
 Then Anthony is dragged roughly into another hall ; there 
 he sees a long chrysalis of the colour of blood; it has the head 
 of a man, surrounded by rays, and the word Knouphis 
 written in Greek characters upon it. On the walls of the 
 room are medallions representing the heads of animals, an 
 ox, a lion, an eagle, a dog, an ass. Men and women sit
 
 88 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 huddled together in silence, distinguishable by the glimmer- 
 ing light from some clay lamps hung under the images on 
 the walls. They talk under their breath of their homes, of 
 their families, of imminent persecution ; boast of the ease 
 with which the Pagans are deceived, who believe that they 
 worship Knouphis ; suddenly an Energumen stands up and 
 chants their profession of faith ; in its pauses they rock 
 themselves and sing in cadence, Kyrie Eleison. At length 
 the Energumen performs the incantations of a snake-charmer, 
 and chants the praises of the serpent elevated by Moses in 
 the wilderness, drunk by the Messiah in the water of 
 Baptism. A sod of turf is brought and held to a huge 
 basket, which stands ornamented with flowers in the midst 
 of the hall, and a monstrous python slowly emerges, to be 
 caressed with rapture by the faithful Ophidians. St. Anthony 
 swoons with horror ; as he recovers, he sees the Nile winding 
 like a vast serpent between its sands. 
 
 Again he is transported, this time to the vaults of the 
 Colosseum ; he is with the Martyrs, who shrink from 
 martyrdom, but recover to curse a Montanist who is dis- 
 covered among them. Drugs are given them which they 
 eagerly swallow ; they pass in to the arena ; Anthony finds 
 himself, in the darkness of night, in the burial-ground of the 
 Martyrs ; noble women come secretly to mourn over their 
 tombs ; others bring wine and food for the dead, and practise 
 heathen rites over the graves of their kindred. As the 
 moniing dawns they disperse ; and Anthony is transported 
 to India, where he watches the self-oblation of a gymno- 
 sophist. 
 
 Again he wakes in his hut. A fire approaches ; it proceeds 
 from a bronze vase carried by a man followed by a woman ; 
 the flame is blue and fluttering ; the man is Simon Magus ; 
 the woman Ennoia, who has been Helen of Troy, Lucretia,
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 89 
 
 Delilah, the ]Moon. Simon Magus vaunts his magic powers ; 
 prepares to bestow on Anthony the second baptism, the 
 baptism of fire ; the saint in despair cries for holy Avater ; 
 the mysterious fire passes away in smoke ; Simon and 
 Ennoia disappear. 
 
 The smoke has become a thick mist ; Anthony is lost ; 
 stretches out his arms in vain to grasp the cross; a wind 
 rises, the mist is dispersed, and a gloriously beautiful youth 
 appears, his fair long hair descending upon his shoulders ; he 
 is attended by a short snub-nosed man of simple countenance. 
 These are Apollonius of Tyana, the worker of miracles, and 
 his faithful Damis. 
 
 Damis and Apollonius tell their story turn about ; Damis 
 proves to be a kind of Sancho Panza, and continually inter- 
 rupts his companion to compel Anthony's admiration, who 
 listens to the tale with impatience, and frequently orders the 
 strangers off the premises. Apollonius eventually offers to 
 show Anthony Jesus in person, whereupon the saint falls at 
 the foot of the cross in prayer, and Apollonius and his com- 
 panion, loudly contemptuous of his brute superstition, float 
 off into the air and disappear. 
 
 Apollonius had awakened in Anthony the sin of curiosity ; 
 he wishes to know something of the pagan gods. They pass 
 before him : the antediluvian gods, formless or hideous ; 
 Vishnu and the Hindu hierarchy of divinities ; Buddha 
 himself, who tells his story, while Hilarion points out the 
 similarities with the incidents of the Gospels. The Hindu 
 gods disappear in smoke as Buddha ends his tale, which 
 Hilarion declares to be the faith of hundreds of millions of 
 men. 
 
 A mysterious creature follows. It has the head of a man 
 and the body of a fish ; it advances upright, flapping with its 
 tail ; it has small arms, a patriarchal countenance. St.
 
 90 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 Anthony laughs. The figure deprecates ridicule, and an- 
 nounces itself as Oannes, an ancient god of the Chaldeans. 
 This suggests Babylon to the saint, who is transported to 
 the temple of Belus, and the garden of Ashtaroth. Ormuz 
 appears, and is driven away by Ahriman ; the great Diana of 
 the Ephesians bewails the loss of her divinity ; a procession of 
 the votaries of the great mother enters and performs her rites. 
 
 The scene returns to Egypt ; and in the far distance, on 
 the other side of the Nile, a woman stands veiled, bearing an 
 infant. It is Isis ; she lifts her head to heaven and her voice 
 is heard, as she tells of the loss of Osiris, and of the Egyptian 
 worshippers. 
 
 The gods of Olympus are then revealed, seated in majesty 
 on their thrones. Their beauty moves Anthony, Hilarion 
 praises them ; points out the details in their worship which 
 correspond with the Christian faith ; Anthony, in hoiTor, 
 recites the Apostles' Creed. Then Olympus is stirred ; a 
 voice is heard, indistinct and terrible, like the roaring of 
 waves, the sound of the forest in the storm, the bellowing of 
 the wind among precipices ; it is the cry of the older gods, 
 of the Titans, announcing the end of the dynasty of Jove. 
 Jupiter comes down from his throne, his thunder-bolt is 
 extinguished in smoke ; Minerva, Hercules, Pluto, Diana, 
 Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, Aphrodite herself, pass into the abyss. 
 
 A procession winds its way among the rocks, formed of all 
 the divinities that men have ever worshipped, the spirits 
 they have feared. The gods of Scythia, of the Cimmerians, 
 of the Etrurians ; the ancient Latin gods ; the household 
 gods of Rome ; even the god Crepitus, 
 
 Last of all is heard a clap of thunder, and a voice : — 
 
 * I was the God of armies, the Lord, the Lord God. 
 ' I spread the tents of Jacob upon the hills, and nurtui'ed my 
 people as they fled in the sands.
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 91 
 
 ' I am He who burned Sodom ; who made the Deluge swallow 
 the earth. It is I who drowned Pharaoh, with the princes, the 
 sons of kings, the chariots of war and the horsemen. 
 
 ' A jealous God, I hated other gods. I crushed the impure ; 
 I beat down the proud : and my desolation ran from the right 
 hand to the left, like a dromedaiy that is set loose in a field of 
 corn. 
 
 ' To deliver Israel I chose the simple. Angels with wings of 
 flame spoke to them in the bushes. 
 
 ' Perfumed with nard, with cinnamon, with myrrh, with trans- 
 parent robes, and high-heeled shoes, women, brave in heart, 
 went to slay captains. The wind, as it passed, carried away my 
 prophets. 
 
 ' I had graven my law upon tables of stone. 
 
 ' It shut in my people as in a citadel. They were my people, 
 and I was their God. The earth was mine, the men were mine, 
 with their thoughts, their works, their labouring tools, and their 
 posterity. 
 
 ' My ark rested in a three-fold sanctuary, behind curtains of 
 purple and burning lamps. I had a whole tribe, who swung 
 censers, to serve me, and the High Priest in a robe of hyacinth, 
 bearing on his breast precious stones, arranged in order of 
 symmetry. 
 
 ' Woe ! Woe ! The Holy of Holies is opened, the veil is 
 torn, the odours of sacrifice are lost in all the winds. The jackal 
 howls in the sepulchres ; my temple is destroyed, my people are 
 scattered. 
 
 'They have strangled the priests with the girdles of their 
 garments. The women are captives ; the precious vessels are 
 melted ! 
 
 ' (^The voice passing into the distance.) 
 
 ' I was the God of armies, the Lord, the Lord God. 
 
 ' {Then there is a vast silence ; a night of deep darkness.) 
 
 ' Anthony. All are passed. 
 
 ' A Voice. I remain. 
 
 ' [And Hilarion is before him, but transfigured, like an arch- 
 angel, beaming with light as the sun, and so tall that Anthony 
 throws back his head to look up at him.] 
 
 ' Anthony. Who then art thou .^
 
 92 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 * HiLARioN. My kingdom is of the measure of the Universe ; 
 and my desire has no ends. I move always, setting free the 
 mind and weighing worlds, without hate, without fear, without 
 pity, without love, and without God, I am called Science. 
 
 ' Anthony (starling back). Thou shouldst rather be . . . the 
 Devil. 
 
 ' HiLARioN (Jixing on him his glowing eyes). Dost thou care to 
 see him ? 
 
 * The saint gives way to his curiosity, and the Devil picking 
 him up on liis horns flies away with him into space. 
 
 ' The vast wings of the Devil conceal him from Anthony, who 
 feels as though he were floating on a cloud ; the desert becomes 
 a yellow stain on the earth's surface, the ocean a puddle. 
 Anthony wishes to see the mountains, behind which the sun 
 sets; the devil speaks; "The sun never sets" : the voice does 
 not startle Anthony, it seems like an echo of his own thought. 
 Soon the earth is a ball ; it is seen turning on its poles in the 
 midst of the azure, rushing round the sun ; again the voice says ; 
 
 ' " Humble thyself, pride of man ; the earth is not the centre 
 of the Universe." ' 
 
 They arrive at the moon, which proves to be desei't ; glide 
 through the fields of stars. Sometimes a comet passes them, 
 then the calm of the numberless lights is restored. Anthony 
 makes out the paths of the stai's, the interlacing of their orbits, 
 he despises the limitation of his old imaginings ; at last, over- 
 burdened with the majesty of infinity, he asks, ' What is the 
 object of all that ? ' 'It has no object,' is the reply. 
 
 The Devil describes suns beyond suns, solar systems beyond 
 solar systems ; and Anthony, oppressed and terrified, cries, 
 ' Enough, enough, I am afraid. I am falling into the abyss.' 
 
 'The Devil (stopping and balancing himself softly on his wings). 
 The Nothing is not ! The Void is not ! Everywhere there 
 are bodies which move on the immovable background of space ; 
 — and if that were limited by anything, it would be no longer 
 Space, but a body ; it has no bounds. 
 
 ' Anthony (in amazement). No bounds ! 
 
 ' The Devil. Rise into the sky for ever and for ever ; thou wilt 
 never reach the summit ! Descend below the earth for milliards 
 and milliards of centuries, thou wilt never touch the bottom ;
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 93 
 
 for there is no bottom, no summit, no height, no depth, no 
 bound ; and Space is comprised in God, who is not a portion of 
 space, so much, or so much less greatness, but the Infinite ! 
 
 ' Anthony {slowly). Matter then ... is part of God ? 
 
 ' The Devil. Why not ? Can'st thou know where He ends ? 
 
 'Anthony. On the contrary, I humble myself, I abase 
 myself before His power ! 
 
 'The Devil. And yet thou wouldst bend Him! Thou 
 speakest to Him, thou adornest Him even with virtues, with 
 kindness, justice, mercy, instead of recognising that He 
 possesses all perfections ! 
 
 'To conceive more than that, is to conceive God beyond 
 God, being beyond being. He is then the only Being, the only 
 Substance. 
 
 ' If Substance could be divided, it would lose its nature, it 
 would be no longer itself, God would exist no more. It is then 
 indivisible, as it is infinite ; and if He had a body. He would 
 be composed of parts. He would no longer be one. He would 
 no longer be infinite. He is then not a person. 
 
 ' Anthony. What ! My prayers, my sobs, the sufferings of 
 my flesh, the raptures of my ardour, all that — has gone to a lie 
 — into space . . . uselessly — like the cry of a bird, like a whirl 
 of dead leaves. {He weeps.) Oh no ! There is above every- 
 thing, some one, a great Soul, a Lord, a Father, whom my heart 
 adores, and who must love me ! 
 
 ' The Devil. Thou desirest that God should not be God ; for 
 if He felt love, anger, or pity. He would pass from His perfec- 
 tion to a greater or smaller perfection. He cannot descend to 
 a sentiment ; or limit Himself in a form. 
 
 'Anthony. One day however, I shall see Him. 
 
 'The Devil. With the blessed, wilt thou not.^ When the 
 finite will enjoy the infinite in a restricted place enclosing the 
 absolute ! 
 
 'Anthony. I care not, there must be a heaven for good, 
 and a hell for evil. 
 
 ' The Devil. Do the requirements of thy reason make the 
 law of things ? Doubtless evil is indifferent to God since the 
 earth is covered with it ! Is it from impotence that He endures 
 it .'' Or from cruelty that He maintains it ? Thinkest thou that
 
 94 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 He is continually busying Himself with re-adjusting the Universe 
 as an imperfect -work, and that he watches over all the move- 
 ments of all beings, from the flight of the butterfly to the 
 thought of man ? 
 
 ' If He created the Universe, His providence is superfluous. 
 If Providence exists, the creation is defective. 
 
 ' But good and evil have to do with thee alone, — as night and 
 day, pleasure and pain, death and birth, which are in relation 
 to one corner of space, to a special environment, to a particular 
 interest. Since the Infinite alone is permanent, there is 
 Infinity ; and that is all. 
 
 ' (The Devil has spread his long wings further and further, and 
 now tliey cover space.) 
 
 ' Anthonv (710 longer sees. He faints). A homble dread chills 
 me to the bottom of my soul. It surpasses the power of my 
 pain. It is as a death deeper than death. I stand in the 
 immensity of darkness. Darkness enters into me. My con- 
 sciousness breaks under this expansion of nothingness ! 
 
 'The Devil. But things happen to thee only by the inter- 
 vention of thy mind. As a concave mirror it defoiTns what it 
 reflects : and means fail thee to verify its exactness. 
 
 ' Never wilt thou know Space in its full extent ; consequently 
 canst thou not form any idea of its cause, have an exact notion 
 of God, nor even say that the Universe is infinite, — for first 
 wouldst thou need to know Infinity. 
 
 ' Form is perhaps an error of thy senses, Substance an 
 imagination of thy thought. 
 
 ' Unless, the Universe being a perpetual flowing and reflowing, 
 the appearance to the contraiy is the truest that there is, the 
 illusion the only reality. 
 
 ' But art thou sure of seeing } Art thou even sure of living } 
 Perhaps nothing is ! 
 
 ' ( The Devil has seized St. Anthony ; and holding him at arm's 
 length, he glares at him with open maw, ready to devour him.) 
 
 ' Adore me then ! and curse the phantom that thou callest God ! 
 
 ' {Anthony in a last movement of hope raises his eyes to heaven. 
 The Devil leaves him.) ' 
 
 At this point we feel that the visions are ended ; Anthony
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 95 
 
 has been tempted by the kist of carnal delights, by the lust 
 of money, by the lust of power, by the lust of the imagina- 
 tion ; he has been shown all the variations of his own creed, 
 the creeds of other peoples, the beauty of the gods of Greece, 
 the homely superstitions of Italy ; at last he has been con- 
 fronted with Science, which bids him humble himself before 
 the futility alike of these, and of his own faith, to which he 
 still clings, not by the force of reason, but by the strength 
 of an habitual sentiment. Now is the time to be rewarded 
 by the final apparition. But no, Flaubert has not yet emptied 
 his bag of monstrosities : Death and Debauchery court the 
 saint, wearied after his struggle with the Devil ; the Sphinx 
 and Chimaera argue in his presence ; the Gryphon appears, 
 and other less familiar monsters, the Zadhuzag, the Unicorn, 
 the Catoblepas, the Basilisk, Pigmies, the men who rest 
 beneath the shadows of their own feet, which turn into a 
 forest wherein the Cynocephali leap and bound ; all sea 
 beasts ; things that are neither animal nor vegetable. 
 Anthony enraptured with the various forms of life, thinks 
 he is assisting at its beginning ; wishes to be all forms him- 
 self, to descend to the beginnings of matter — to be matter — 
 when ' the day at last appears, and, as when the curtains are 
 lifted from a tabernacle, clouds of gold rolling away in heavy 
 spirals disclose the sky. In the very centre, in the very disc 
 of the sun, beams the face of Jesus Christ. Anthony makes 
 the sign of the cross and returns to his prayers."' 
 
 Were Bouilhet and Ducamp right in their summary, com- 
 plete, final condemnation of this work ? 
 
 Its defects must have been far more apparent in the 
 original and longer form ; but it was always susceptible of 
 reduction. Would it not have been better to advise ' nonum 
 prematur in annum,'' to have put it aside, and to have 
 returned to it when it had become unfamiliar ?
 
 96 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 Ducamp's criticism is unsympathetic and pedantic. ' Under 
 the pretext of pushing romanticism to its furthest limits, 
 Flaubert, without suspecting it, had taken a retrograde step.' 
 
 This was not a question of romantic and classic ; it was a 
 question whether Flaubert had succeeded in realising his 
 literary dream of a prose poem, whether a form, almost 
 peculiar to himself, had acquired the necessary substance to 
 take its place as a ^\ ork of art. 
 
 To judge such a work it must be judged from the author's 
 point of view, and not from any preconceived notions of 
 what is and what is not admissible in art. Flaubert's idea 
 was to write a dream which should pass like a flash, — all in 
 one breath ; the reader was to be carried on from one 
 glorious vision to another without respite, without thought ; 
 at the same time he was to be reduced, mentally, to St. 
 Anthony's condition ; to be in the fourth century a.d., with 
 no knowledge that would make the existence of the Basilisk 
 and the Catoblepas less probable to him than that of the 
 elephant and the hippopotamus ; with the inclination to 
 marvels, with faith in magic, and accustomed to see pagan 
 rites and ceremonies in full activity around him. St. 
 Anthony had not the comfortable assurance of the nine- 
 teenth century with regard to the futility of Montanus and 
 Apollonius ; he had seen men living like the Indian Fakirs, 
 and calling themselves Christians ; he had seen devout and 
 honovirable women kneeling at the feet of hermits ; he had 
 himself seen and defied the devil ; the air for him was full of 
 evil spirits. 
 
 Flaubert is unable to maintain the saint's simplicity of 
 mind ; sometimes we are St. Anthony, sometimes we are 
 criticising St. Anthony, often St. Anthony becomes a mere 
 interjection. At times the note of low comedy jars upon us ; 
 at others our reveries are disturbed by a sarcastic remark
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 97 
 
 which brings us to earth again ; at times we drop from our 
 high visions to the merest bathos. 
 
 Further, to be certain of their effect the allusions in such 
 a work should be tolerably familiar ; if explanations are 
 required, they should be introduced in an artistic form, as, 
 for instance, is excellently well done when the orgies of the 
 Ophidians are described ; but we are not affected in any 
 way, except to sheer boredom, by pages from Pliny ""s Natural 
 History and similar works, such as the following : — 
 
 ' All kinds of horrible beasts rise up ; the Tragelaphus, half 
 stag half ox ; the MyTmecoleo, lion in front ant behind, whose 
 genitals are reversed ; the Python Aksar, sixty cubits long, 
 which terrified Moses ; the great weasel Pastinaca, which kills 
 trees by its odour ; the Presteros, which renders mad by its 
 touch ; the Mirag, a horned hare living in the isles of the sea, 
 etc. etc' 
 
 Again, Apollonius is made to say : — 
 
 * We came back by the region of the Aromates, by the land of 
 the Gangarides, the promontory of Comaria, the country of the 
 Sachalites, the Adramites and the Homerites ; — then across the 
 Cassanian mountains, the Red Sea and the island of Topazus, we 
 penetrated into Ethiopia, by the kingdom of the Pygmies.' 
 
 Doubtless Flaubert could have given chapter and verse 
 for all these names, and have pointed out the correct route 
 on a map of the ancient world ; for in these things he was 
 conscientious ; but to the ordinary reader, even to the 
 ordinary classical scholar, these strings of names mean little 
 or nothing ; nor are we all equally in love with the sound of 
 Taprobana. In verse we can feel the majesty of ' vast 
 Acroceravmian walls'" and revel in the mere sound, without 
 requiring to know the locality of the cliffs in question ; but 
 in prose we require an association as well as a sound. This 
 love of mere names is an inherent vice in Flaubert ; it spoils 
 
 G
 
 98 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 a good deal of the Anthony^ a good deal more of Salammbo, 
 and nearly mars the St. Julien. He had a retentive memory 
 for such names, especially when they were associated with 
 grotesque facts, and could not be persuaded that for artistic 
 purposes they were valueless. He uses them recklessly, as 
 for instance : ' The rustic gods withdraw weeping, Sartor, 
 Sarrator, Vervactor, Collina, Vallona, Hostilinus, all covered 
 with little hooded mantles and carrying a hoe, or a fork, a 
 mattock, a pick.' In the same way there is a whole page of 
 minor gods whose names and attributes are given, as they 
 might be in a folk-lore dictionary. ' You wanted to make 
 music, and you have only made a noise,' was a sound 
 criticism of the friends. 
 
 A similar defect is the accumulation of grotesque faiths 
 and superstitions among the heresies ; Flaubert had a mania 
 for the grotesque, he never forgot an illustration of it ; 
 often this leads him to a repetition of effects, he will not 
 be done with his joke; it is the story of the 'young 
 phenomenon."' 
 
 Further, Flaubert had a most unhappy knack of calling 
 his books by the wrong names. This is not a Temptation of 
 St. Anthony ; it is a Vision of St. Anthony : called by that 
 name it is no longer open to the criticism of Ducamp, ' that it 
 has no progressive movement. "" If we are not invited by the 
 title to expect movement and progress, we can enjoy without 
 being disturbed by unfulfilled expectations the words and 
 gorgeous phrases that pass ' like a glorious roll of drums, 
 through the triumph of his dream.' It is one of Flaubert's 
 curious obstinacies that when he had once fixed on a title 
 he could not change it. He formed the idea of writing a 
 Temptation o/ St. Anthony and a Sentimental Education, 
 early in life ; and though the works eventually published 
 vmder these titles differed widely in scope from those
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 99 
 
 originally planned, the titles remained, to the confusion of 
 the reader and the delight of the malignant critics ; even 
 Salammho and Madame Bovary might be named with closer 
 reference to their respective subjects, while Bouvard et 
 Ptcuchet, which might be the name of a trading firm, tells 
 us nothing whatever about the contents of the book. The 
 Story of' a Simple Soid, and St. Jidian the Hospitable, are 
 alone well named : the third of the short stories might as 
 well be entitled Herod Antipas, or John the Baptist, as 
 Herodias. 
 
 In spite of these defects the St. Anthony remains the work 
 of a giant ; certain thoughts are too big for the ordinary 
 forms of art, certain messages have to be conveyed through 
 the minds of great men in unfamiliar, incongruous forms. 
 Shakespeare had to be disburdened of Lear, Goethe of Faust. 
 Let us take what these men have given us and be thankful. 
 
 Criticism is not always an infallible business. Ducamp and 
 Bouilhet alike failed to observe that, in the first St. Anthony, 
 the pig, who was introduced to be tempted by pride and 
 convinced that he would become a wild boar, was a confusion. 
 It was St. Anthony of Padua, not St. Anthony of Egypt, 
 whose holiness was enhanced by the faithful companionship 
 of this delectable animal. 
 
 The work was inspired by Alfred le Poittevin. In the 
 long scene with the Devil we trace the influence of those 
 long hours of metaphysical discussion with him ; and when 
 it was published in 1876 it was dedicated to his memory, 
 twenty-eight years after his death. Flaubert's affections 
 were permanent. 
 
 The result of the adverse judgment of the friends was, 
 that Flaubert determined to write a story in which his 
 irrepressible lyrical tendency should find no possible outlet. 
 Bouilhet suggested, the day after the reading of St. Anthony
 
 100 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 was over : ' Why should you not write the story of 
 Delaunay ? "* The story of Delaunay is the story of Madame 
 Bovary ; Delaunay had been a pupil of Dr. Flaubert, had 
 acquired a country practice near Rouen, and had been the 
 victim of a worthless wife. This story Flaubert expanded 
 into Madame Bovary ; and again by an infelicitous title 
 restricted the attention of the reader to what is merely an 
 important episode in his work ; diverting him from perceiving 
 the width of its scope.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE EAST 
 
 On ^Monday, October 29th 1849, Flaubert started from 
 Paris for his long-anticipated Eastern tour. He was accom- 
 panied by Ducamp, who carried a quantity of the then 
 clumsy photographic apparatus ; and by a servant — a 
 Corsican named Sassetti — who proved altogether satisfactory. 
 His health had been misatisfactory again for the previous 
 year ; and we cannot sufficiently admire the devotion of 
 Ducamp, who took this responsibility upon himself — the more 
 so, that his task was often made extremely depressing by 
 Flauberfs home-sickness. He appeared to Ducamp not to 
 be enjoying the torn* in the least ; not to be observing ; and 
 then at times there were those stupendous jokes. But 
 though on the Nile Flaubert talked of the Seine, as on the 
 Seine he talked of the Nile, his letters prove that he was 
 really keenly observing and delighting in the long-dreamed- 
 of East. 
 
 Extracts from his letters will show the way in which the 
 journey was affecting him ; also the care with which he 
 patiently collected materials for the great Oriental romance 
 Avhich he had long been meditating. 
 
 To HIS Mother. 
 
 * Malta. Wednesday night, 7-8 November. 
 ' Know you one thing, poor dear old woman, one splendid 
 fact. I have not been sea-sick. Not a bit (except on leaving 
 
 101
 
 102 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 Marseilles, where I got rid of a glass of rum, which I had 
 swallowed to give me courage). Otherwise during the whole 
 of the crossing, that is to say from Sunday morning to this 
 evening, I have been one of the sauciest, if not the most saucy 
 of the passengers. It has not been the same with Maxime 
 and Sassetti, who have shot a sufficient number of cats. As for 
 me ! walks on the deck, dinners with the officers, or I stand on 
 the bridge between the two paddle-boxes in the company of the 
 Captain, where I parade myself in piratical attitudes, my cap on 
 one side, my cigar in my beak. I take lessons in navigation, in 
 manoeuvring, etc. In the evening I gaze at the waves, and 
 meditate, draped in my cloak, like Childe Harold. In short I 
 am the real card. I do not know what is the matter with me, 
 but I am adored on board. The gentlemen call me Father 
 Flaubert, so imposing, as it appears, is my mug upon the briny. 
 You see, poor old woman, all is well and the start is good ; but 
 don't go and think that the sea has been calm ; on the contraiy, 
 the weather has been a bit rough, the east wind delayed us 
 twelve hours.' 
 
 The first sight of the East at Alexandria is thus 
 described : — 
 
 ' When we were two hours from the coast of Egypt I went up 
 on to the fore lookout with the boatswain, and saw the seraglio 
 of Abbas Pacha like a black dome on the blue sea. The sun 
 beat upon it. I saw the East through, or rather in, a great 
 silvery light pouring on the sea. Soon the outline of the shore 
 was discerned, and the first thing we saw on land were two 
 camels led by a driver, and then all along the quay worthy 
 Arabs, who were fishing with lines in the most peaceful manner 
 in the world, 
 
 ' Disembarking was a scene of the most bewildering uproar. 
 Negroes, negresses, camels, turbans, whacks dealt right and left 
 with guttural cries fit to rend one's ears. I snatch myself a 
 bellyful of colours, as an ass fills itself with oats. The stick 
 plays a big part here ; everybody, who wears a respectable coat, 
 thwacks everyone, who wears a dirty coat ; when I say coat, I 
 should say breeches. Numbers of gentlemen are to be seen 
 wandering about the streets with nothing on but a shirt and a
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 103 
 
 long pipe. All the women except those of the lowest class are 
 veiled, with ornaments on their noses, which hang and swing 
 like those on horses' bridles. On the other hand if the face is 
 not seen, the whole bosom is exposed. Modesty, changing 
 country, changes place, like a muddled ti'aveller who rides now 
 on the imperial, now inside. 
 
 ' You see that all is going well, poor mother. We are covered 
 mth flannel from head to foot. Spirits and health are alike 
 good. Maxime watches me, and waits on me as though I were 
 a child. I believe he would put me under a glass case if he 
 could, for fear something may happen to me.' 
 
 To Louis BOUILHET. 
 
 'Cairo. December 1st, 1849. 
 
 ' I begin, my dear old man, with a kiss for your good head, 
 and with breathing on to this paper all the inspiration which 
 can make your mind come to meet me. For the rest I believe, 
 that you must be thinking awfully much of us, for we think 
 awfully much of you, and miss you a hundred times a day. At 
 the present moment the moon sparkles on the minarets, all is 
 silent. From time to time there is a barking of dogs ; in front 
 of my window, whose curtains are drawn, I have in the garden 
 a black mass of trees, seen in the pale brilliancy of the night. 
 I am writing at a square table covered with a green cloth, by 
 tlie light of two candles, and taking my ink from a pomatum 
 pot. I hear the young Maxime behind the partition messing 
 with his photography ; above, the mutes are sleeping, that is to 
 say Sassetti and the dragoman, which aforesaid dragoman is, to 
 say the truth, one of the most aiTant ruffians one could mention. 
 
 ' As for my Excellency, it is clothed in a great Nubian shirt in 
 white cotton ornamented with tufts, and of a cut which it would 
 take long to describe. My head is completely bare, saving a 
 lock on the back of it (it is by this that Mahomed is to lift you 
 on the Day of Judgment) and covered with a red tarbouche, 
 which simply crackles with scarlet, and for the first few days 
 made me crack with heat. We have fairly Oriental mugs. . . . 
 And you, poor beloved old sinner, what are you doing in that 
 dirty Fathei-land, tenderly dreaming of which I sometimes 
 surprise myself .> I think of our Sundays at Croisset, when I
 
 104 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 used to hear the noise of the iron gate, and to see the stick 
 appear, the portfolio and yourself. . . . When shall we resume 
 those endless talks at the comer of the fire, sunk in my green 
 arm-chairs ? . . . How is Melsenis getting on ? 
 
 ' In one word here is my epitome of what I have felt up to 
 this point : little surprise at nature, in the way of landscape, sky 
 and desert (except the mirage) ; prodigious amazement at the 
 towns and the men. Hugo would say : " I was nearer to God 
 than to humanity." That doubtless has to do with the fact that 
 I had dreamed, studied, and imagined more what has to do with 
 horizons, verdure, sand, trees, sun, than houses, streets, customs 
 and usages. Nature has been to me something recovered, the 
 rest something found. But there is a fresh element, which I 
 did not expect to see here, and which is immense, that is the 
 grotesque. All the old comedy is here of the bethwacked slave, 
 the crusty seller of women, the rascally merchant : very young, 
 very true, charming. , . . One of the finest things is the camel. 
 I am never tired of seeing this strange animal pass, which struts 
 like a turkey, and swings its neck like a swan. They have a cry 
 which I wear myself out with trying to reproduce ; I hope to 
 bring it back with me, but it is difficult because of a certain 
 gurgling, which vibrates at the end of the rattle that they utter.' 
 
 Like all other European travellers Flaubert visited the 
 Pyramids, and was fairly terrified by the first apparition of 
 the Sphinx ; but he was not content with the sights which 
 ordinarily attract Europeans ; he would know the East more 
 intimately : dined in Turkish restaurants, where people eat 
 with their fingers, men and animals make themselves 
 completely at home, and, from time to time, some one stands 
 up and says his prayers ; learned the names of foods and 
 perfumes, experimented rashly in some of the latter, — all 
 with a view to future literary uses. 
 
 ' To come back to the life that we lead here, I had a splendid 
 afternoon some days back. Maxime had remained busy over 
 something. I took Hassan (the second dragoman, whom we 
 have temporarily engaged) and made my way to the Coptic
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 105 
 
 bishop to have a talk with him. I went into a square court 
 surrounded with columns, in the middle of which there was a 
 little garden, that is to say, some large trees, beds of dark 
 greeneiy, whose border was formed by a divan in trellised wood. 
 My dragoman with his wide drawers and big-sleeved jacket 
 walked in front, I behind. On one of the corners of the divan 
 Avas seated an old long-robe with a repellent expression, a white 
 beard, in a great mantle, and surrounded with books in a 
 strange handwriting scattered on all sides. At a certain 
 distance stood three doctors in black robes, younger, and with 
 black beards. The dragoman said : " Here is a French noble- 
 man who is travelling all over the world to learn, and who 
 comes to you to talk of your religion." (That is the style in 
 which we treat one another. Imagine the phrases that I 
 invent. . . .) Well, to return to the bishop. He received me 
 with much ceremony ; coffee was brought, and soon I began to 
 put questions to him touching the Trinity, the Virgin, the 
 Gospels, the Eucharist ; all my old lore of the St. Anthony 
 rose like a wave in me. 
 
 ' It was superb, the blue sky over our heads, the trees, the 
 open books, the old fellow ruminating in his beard to find me 
 answers, I beside him, my legs crossed, gesticulating Avith my 
 pencil, and taking notes, while Hassan stood up immoveable 
 translating viva voce, and the three other doctors seated on 
 stools gave opinions with their heads, and from time to time 
 interpreted a few words. I thoroughly enjoyed it. That was 
 the real East, the land of religion, and ample costumes. When 
 the bishop had been floored, one of the doctors took his place, 
 and when at last I saw that they all had signs of inflammation 
 in the cheeks, I went out. I shall go back, for there is much 
 to be learned there. The Coptic religion is the most ancient 
 Christian sect there is, and hardly anything is known of it in 
 Europe, not to jsay nothing (as far as I know). I shall go in 
 the same way to see the Armenians, the Gi*eeks, the Sunnites, 
 and above all the Mussulman doctors.' 
 
 Since that time more has been learned of the Coptic 
 religion. 
 
 * In Europe people imagine the Arab race to be very grave
 
 106 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 here it is very gay, very artistic in its gesticulations, and its 
 ornaments. Circumcisions and marriages are merely so many 
 pretexts for rejoicings and music. It is on those days that is 
 heard in the streets the strident clucking of the Arab women, 
 who, packed up in veils, with their elbows spread, resemble, on 
 their donkeys, black full moons advancing on something inde- 
 scribable with four legs. . . . For one who observes things 
 with some attention more is to be re-found here, than found. 
 A thousand notions, that one had in a state of germ inside one, 
 grow and become definite like a renewed reminiscence. 
 Accordingly as soon as I disembarked at Alexandria I saw 
 advancing towards me in full life the anatomy of the Egyptian 
 sculptures, the high shoulders, long chests, thin legs, and so 
 forth. The dances, that we have had danced for our benefit, 
 have too hieratic a character not to come from the dances of 
 the old East, which is always young, because nothing in it 
 changes. The Bible is here a picture of contemporary manners. 
 Do you know that only a few years ago the murderer of an ox 
 was still punished with death, as in the days of Apis ? . . . 
 It is almost impossible but that in a short time from now 
 England will become the mistress of Egypt : she already has 
 Aden filled with troops. The transit of Suez will be very 
 convenient to bring you the redcoats to Cairo one fine morning. 
 We shall hear of it in France a fortnight later, and we shall be 
 very much astonished. Remember my prediction. On the 
 first movement in Europe England will take Egypt, Russia 
 Constantinople, and we, by way of reprisal, will go and get 
 ourselves shot in the mountains of Syria.' 
 
 To Louis BoUILHET. 
 
 'Cairo. January 15, 1850. 
 ' When we meet again many days will have passed, I mean 
 many things. Shall we be still the same ^ Will there be no 
 change in the communion of our beings ? I have too much pride 
 in ourselves not to think so. Work on — remain what you are. 
 Continue your disgusting and sublime way of earning a liveli- 
 hood, and then we will see about making the skin of those 
 drums sound, which we have long been keeping stretched so 
 tight. . . . The second pyramid has its summit all white with
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 107 
 
 the dung of eagles and vultures, who endlessly float around 
 the tops of these monuments, which recalled to me the follow- 
 ing from St. Anthony: "The gods with ibis'-heads have their 
 shoulders whitened by the dung of birds." Maxime kept 
 repeating : " I saw the Sphinx fleeing in the direction of Libya. 
 It ran like a jackal." 
 
 'The other day I took a bath. I was alone in the recesses 
 of the hot room watching the light fall through the glass open- 
 ings in the dome. Warm water ran everywhere ; stretched 
 out like a calf I thought of a heap of things ; all my pores 
 quickly expanded. It is very voluptuous, and there is a certain 
 chastened melancholy in thus taking a bath all alone, lost in 
 these dim halls, where the least noise sounds like a cannon 
 shot, while the naked kellaks call to one another, and turn you 
 and twist you like embalmers arranging you for the tomb. 
 
 ' By means of bakshish (bakshish and whacks are the basis of 
 the Arab, nothing else is undei'stood, and nothing else is seen) 
 we have been initiated. 
 
 * Serpents were placed around our necks and hands ; incan- 
 tations recited over our heads ; they breathed into our mouths ; 
 it was very amusing. The men who exercise such culpable 
 industries execute their vile juggleries, as M. de Voltaire used 
 to say, with singular skill. . . . We argue Avith priests of all 
 religions. It is sometimes really splendid in the way of poses 
 and attitudes. We have translations made us of songs, stories, 
 traditions, everything that is most popular and oriental. We 
 employ learned men — literally. We have our fine touches, 
 heaps of impudence, enormous liberty of language. The pro- 
 prietor of our hotel even finds that at times we go a little too 
 far. One of these days we are going to visit some sorcerers. 
 AU with a view to those old aims.' 
 
 To HIS Mother. 
 
 'Cairo. February 3rd, 1850. 
 ' 1 have caught a bad cold by staying five hours upright on a 
 wall to see the ceremony of the Danseh. This is what it is : 
 the word " danseh " means " trampling," and never was a name 
 better given. It has to do with a man, who passes on horse- 
 back over several others crouched on the ground like dogs. At
 
 108 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 certain epochs of the year this festival is repeated only at Cairo 
 in memory of, and to renew the miracle of, a certain holy 
 Mussulman, who once entered Cairo marching thus on horse- 
 back over earthen vessels without breaking them. The sheik, 
 who repeats this ceremony, should wound the men no more 
 than the saint broke the earthen vessels. If the men die of itj 
 their sins are the cause. I saw dervishes there, who had iron 
 spits passed thi-ough their mouths^ and their chests. Oranges 
 were spitted at the two ends of the iron rods. The crowd of 
 the faithful howled with enthusiasm ; to that you must join 
 music savage enough to drive one mad. When the sheik 
 appeared on horseback, my gentlemen laid themselves on the 
 ground with their heads down ; they were put in rows like 
 herrings, and heaped close to one another, so that there should 
 be no interval between the bodies. A man walked over them 
 to see if the platform of humanity was firm and close, and then 
 to clear the course, a hail, a tempest, a hurricane of whacks 
 administered by eunuchs began to rain right and left at ran- 
 dom, on whatever happened to be there. We were perched 
 on a wall, Sassetti and Joseph at our feet. We stayed there 
 from eleven till nearly four. It was very cold, and we had 
 hardly room to stir, so great was the crowd, and so small the 
 place we had taken ; but it was a very good one and nothing 
 escaped us. We heard the palm sticks sound dully on the 
 tarbouches like the drumsticks on drums full of tow, or rather 
 on balls of wool. This is exact. The sheik advanced, his horse 
 held by two attendants, and himself supported by two others ; 
 and the good gentleman needed it. His hands began to 
 tremble, a nervous attack seized him, and at the end of his 
 parade, he was almost unconscious. His horse passed at a slow 
 walk over the bodies of more than two hundred men lying flat 
 on their stomachs. As for how many died of it, it is impossible 
 to know anything about them ; the crowd pours in behind the 
 sheik in such a way, when once he has passed, that it is no 
 easier to know what has become of these unfortunates, than to 
 make out the fate of a pin thrown into a torrent. The evening 
 before we had been in a convent of dervishes, where we had 
 seen some of them fall in convulsions by dint of crying Allah ! 
 These are gay sights, and would have made M. de Voltaire
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 109 
 
 laugh hugely. What reflections would he not have made on 
 the poor human mind ! fanaticism ! superstition ! It did not 
 make me laugh at all. It is too interesting to be terrifying. 
 What is most terrible is their music' 
 
 On the sixth of February the friends started up the Nile ; 
 these were the days before Cook ; travelling was slower but 
 more independent, and the crew of your boat were always at 
 hand to afford opportunities for enjoying the grotesque. 
 Other travellers have described the Nile, with its shores more 
 like ocean-strands than the banks of a river ; its crocodiles, 
 storks and distant chain of Arabian mountains ; though 
 Flauberfs descriptions bear his own distinctive stamp — 
 sudden transitions from the elevated to the vulgar, from the 
 sublime to the obscene — there is not much with which we are 
 not already familiar. On the way down, at Wadi-Halfa, the 
 travellers made the acquaintance of the Governor of Ibrim, 
 charged with collecting the taxes in the whole province. 
 
 ' That is not a light task. It is executed with plentiful 
 relays of thwacks, arrests, and imprisonments. We came down 
 side by side with him for three days. A villager had refused 
 to pay, the sheik put him in chains^ and carried him off in his 
 boat. When he passed near us, we saw the poor old fellow at 
 the bottom of the boat, bareheaded and duly padlocked ; on 
 the shore men and women followed shouting. That did not in 
 the least flurrj^ our good Turk, who, however, thought it prudent 
 not to let us get out of sight, hoping that, if by any chance he 
 were attacked, we had some good guns which would carry far. 
 He came to make calls on us, while descending the Nile like 
 ourselves. Once he brought us a present of a small sheep, 
 which was distinctly agreeable to us, for we had eaten nothing 
 but chicken and turtle doves for six weeks. We had conversa- 
 tions with this excellent fellow upon his speciality, that is to 
 say, he gave us numbers of details upon the method of killing 
 a man with whacks in a fixed number of blows ; they explain 
 all that to you very elegantly, laughing, as we talk of the
 
 110 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 theatre, and carry it into execution very placidly, as a man 
 smokes a pipe.' 
 
 On the way down the Nile an expedition was made across 
 the desert to Kosseir ; the travellers had a longing to 
 contemplate the Red Sea. On this expedition an event 
 occurred, which is not mentioned in Flaubert's correspondence, 
 but of which Ducamp gives the following account : — 
 
 ' During this excursion the only painful incident between 
 Flaubert and myself took place ; we remained forty-eight 
 hours without speaking to one another. (The evening after 
 their departure from Kosseir a camel carrying all their supply 
 of water had fallen, and burst all the skins. They were two 
 days and a half from the nearest wells on the return journey ; 
 but imprudently instead of turning back, trusted to the chance 
 of meeting other travellers, and borrowing. In this they were 
 disappointed.) After suffering thirst for thirty-six hours, while 
 we were passing through a defile, a furnace, formed of granite 
 rocks, of a rose colour, covered with inscriptions, Flaubert said 
 to me : " Do you remember the lemon ices that one eats at 
 Tortoni's .'' " I made a sign of the head in the affirmative. He 
 resumed : " Lemon ice is a superior article ; admit that you 
 would not be annoyed at having to swallow a lemon ice." 
 Roughly enough I replied : " Yes." After an intei-val of five 
 minutes : " Ah ! the lemon ices ! All around the glass there 
 is a cloud, which is like a white jelly." I said : " Suppose we 
 were to change the conversation ? " He replied : " That would 
 be better, but lemon ice is worthy of being celebrated : one 
 fills the spoon, it makes a little mound, one softly squeezes it 
 between the tongue and the palate ; it melts slowly, coolly, 
 deliciously ; it bathes the uvula, glides over the tonsils, descends 
 into the gullet, which is only too happy, and it falls into the 
 stomach which bursts with laughing, so delighted is it. Between 
 you and me there is a scarcity of lemon ices in the desert of 
 Kosseir ! " 
 
 ' I knew Gustave. I knew that nothing could stop him, 
 when he was a prey to one of these possessions, and I made no 
 answer, in the hope that my silence would make him hold his
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 111 
 
 tongue. It was no use, he began again, and seeing that I said 
 nothing, he began to shout : " Lemon ice ! Lemon ice ! " I 
 could not stand it any longer ; a horrible thought shook me. 
 I said to myself: "I shall kill him." I drove my dromedary 
 on, so as to touch him, I took him by the arm : " Where do you 
 wish to be, in front or behind ? " He replied : " I will go in 
 front." I stopped my dromedary, and when our little troop 
 was two hundred yards in front of me, I resumed my march. 
 In the evening I left Flaubert in the middle of our men, 
 and I went and prepared my bed in the sand more than two 
 hundred yards from the camp. At three o'clock in the morn- 
 ing we started at the same distance from one another, and 
 without having exchanged a word. Towards three o'clock in 
 the afternoon the dromedaries lengthened their pace, and 
 showed signs of agitation; water was not far off; at half past 
 three we were at Bir Amber, and we had drunk. Flaubert 
 took me in his arms and said : "I thank you for not having 
 blown out my brains with your gun ; in your place I should 
 not have resisted." ' 
 
 Poor Ducamp suffered in a less violent degree during their 
 stay at Cairo from a French doctor living there, who wrote 
 execrable tragedies. The man''s vanity enraptured Flaubert, 
 who was never tired of complimenting him on his poems, 
 and encouraging him to recite them. The unfortunate 
 Ducamp had to listen to it all. But there were other jokes, 
 which both enjoyed equally. Writing to his mother from 
 near Cairo on the return journey, Flaubert says : — 
 
 * As for Maxime and myself, we were never less bored on 
 the boat, although we have nothing more to do or see. We 
 have books, and we don't read. No more do we write. We 
 pass nearly all our time in doing the " sheicks," that is to say 
 the old men ; (the sheick is the old gentleman, foolish, retired, 
 respected, in a very good position, behind the age) ; and in 
 asking one another questions in the style of the same : 
 
 ' " And is there a little society in the towns that you passed 
 through ? Had you any club where the papers are read ? "
 
 112 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' " Is the railway movement being felt at all ? Is there any 
 main line ? " 
 
 * " And as I hope, God be thanked, socialist doctrines have not 
 yet penetrated to those shores ? " 
 
 ' " Is there at least good wine ? Have you any celebrated 
 vintages ? " 
 
 ' " Are the ladies agreeable ? " 
 
 ' " Are there any good cafes ? Do the shop ladies assume 
 an expensive style ? " 
 
 ' All this in a trembling voice, and with an imbecile air. 
 From the sheick simple we arrived at the double sheick, that 
 is to say at dialogue. Thereupon dialogues on everything that 
 happens in the world, and with good old crusted opinions. 
 Then the sheick has aged, and has become the old palsied 
 man, riddled with infirmities, and talking endlessly of his meals 
 and his digestion. Here Maxime has developed a great talent 
 for mimicry. He has a nephew who is a magistrate's clerk, a 
 maid who is called Marianne. He is called pere Etienne, me 
 he calls Quarafon (Juggins — carafe). The name " Quarafon " 
 is sublime. 
 
 ' We walk about mutually supporting one another and slob- 
 bering. He tells me a hundred times a day to write to his 
 nephew the clerk to tell him to come because " he does not feel 
 well," and as we are overdone with chicken, whenever I bewail 
 myself, he says to me : " Come, Quarafon, cheer up, you shall 
 have a good chicken for dinner : I told Marianne to do one for 
 you." In the evening it takes us half an hour to get to bed. 
 We moan and groan and turn ourselves heavily like people 
 overwhelmed with rheumatism. " Come then, good night, my 
 friend, good night." A few days ago I was just getting to 
 sleep when I felt a weight pressing on my back, it was pere 
 Etienne, who was coming to sleep with me, because he was 
 afraid of being all alone in his own bed. Sometimes, too, there 
 are hot disputes, wherein pere Etienne takes advantage of his 
 superiority in the matter of age, and Quarafon declares that he 
 will take the coach next week.' 
 
 Avoiding the overland route to Syria as unnecessarily 
 dull and long, the travellers went by sea to Beyrout and
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 113 
 
 thence to Jerusalem. Flaubert experienced the usual dis- 
 illusionment with regard to the ' holy places/ but was 
 enraptured with the scenery. 
 
 Writing to Bouilhet from Damascus, he discusses at great 
 length many literary questions. Among other things, he 
 says :— 
 
 ' You do well to think of the Dictionary of Accepted Opinions. 
 That book, done completely, and preceded by a good preface, 
 in which one would point out how the work has been written 
 with the object of attaching the public to tradition, order, 
 general conventionalities, and arranged in such a way that the 
 reader would not know whether you were laughing at him or 
 not, would perhaps be a strange book, and capable of succeed- 
 ing, for it would be all real. 
 
 * I read at Jerusalem a Socialist book {Essay on Positive 
 Philosophy, by Auguste Comte). It was lent to me by a wild 
 Catholic who insisted by main force that I should read it in 
 order to see, etc. etc. I turned over some pages of it ; it is 
 consumingly stupid, and indeed I was not mistaken. There 
 are in it immense mines of comedy, quite a California of the 
 grotesque. There is perhaps something else as well. That 
 may be. One of the first studies to which I shall betake myself 
 on my return, will certainly be that of all these deplorable 
 Utopias, which agitate our society, and threaten to cover it 
 with ruins. Why not accommodate ourselves to the conditions 
 which are submitted to us ? They are as good as any other ; to 
 take things impartially, few have been more fertile. Folly 
 consists in the wish for finality. We say to ourselves : " But 
 our foundation is not fixed, which of the two will be right .'' " 
 I see a past in ruins, and a future in germs, the one is too 
 old, the other is too young. All is confused. But that is 
 not understanding the twilight. That is to wish for mid- 
 night or midday only. What does the face that to-morrow 
 will bear, matter ; we only see the face of to-day. It cuts 
 hideous mugs truly, and therefore enters the better into 
 romanticism. 
 
 * When has the middle-class man been more gigantic than 
 now ? What is Moliere's Bourgeois in comparison with him ? 
 
 H
 
 114 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 M. Jourdain does not come up to the level of the first tradesman 
 you meet in the street ; and the envious phiz of the artisan ? 
 and the pushing young man ? and the magistrate ! And all 
 that is fermenting in fools' brains, and boiling in the hearts of 
 sharpers ! 
 
 ' Yes, stupidity consists in wishing to be final. We are a 
 thread, and we wish to know the woof. That is the reason of 
 these eternal discussions on the decay of art. People spend 
 their time now in saying : " We are quite done, here we are 
 at the last limit, etc. etc.." What strong mind has ever brought 
 things to an end } To begin with, Homer .'' Let us enjoy the 
 picture, it is good, too.' 
 
 At Nazareth Flaubert went to see the lepers, and many 
 years later turned what he saw there to good account in 
 St. Julian the Hospitable. 
 
 At this period plans were changed ; it had been originally 
 proposed to continue the journey yet further East, to visit 
 Mesopotamia, Persia, possibly India; but on the return 
 visit to Beyrout, Ducamp received a letter from Mrae. 
 Flaubert imploring him to return, as also did her son. 
 Ducamp, to whom the further journey meant much, 
 most unselfishly sacrificed himself to the wishes of the 
 mother and the son ; though he felt with justice that they 
 should have counted the cost of the longer tour to begin 
 with. The moment his feet were turned homewards, 
 Flaubert began to regret the places that he should never 
 see. 
 
 In Syria Flaubert found an unheard-of collection of all 
 the old religions ; people in Lebanon still adoring the cedars 
 as in the days of the prophets. With the cedars themselves 
 he was disappointed, — they were too old and too few ; but the 
 scenery was as fine as the I*yrenees, and under an Oriental 
 sun. 
 
 There lived in close intimacy with the Flaubert family 
 ' Uncle Parain."* He had married the sister of Dr. Flaubert,
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 115 
 
 and therefore was not a blood relation. For Gustave he had 
 a strong love, and deep admiration, making the young man 
 his friend, as the following extracts from a letter written 
 during quarantine at Rhodes abundantly prove : — 
 
 'You are very wrong, my good old friend, not to write to me 
 oftener, for I assure you that your letters are real "days out" 
 for me. The last made me laugh heartily, and what you tell 
 me of all your acquaintances has amused me not a little. That 
 would be something to talk over at full length by the fireside, 
 with our noses under the chimney-piece and our feet in our 
 shppers. That is what I propose to myself on my return. 
 What a spree we will give ourselves with the bellows ! It will 
 be necessary to put a spring to them. 
 
 ' It seems that the young Bouilhet betakes himself somewhat 
 to immorality in my absence. You see him too often. You 
 demoralise that young man. If I were his mother, I should 
 forbid him your society. There is nothing so bad for youth as 
 the company of debauched old men. Nevei'theless continue, 
 my good friends, to drink a glass to my health when you meet. 
 Even fuddle yourselves in my honour. I pardon you by antici- 
 pation.' 
 
 ' Have you ever reflected, dear old comrade, on all the serenity 
 of fools .'' Stupidity is something unshakeable, nothing attacks 
 it, without being crushed upon it. It is of the nature of 
 granite, hard and resistant. At Alexandria one Thompson, of 
 Sunderland has written his name in letters six feet high on 
 Pompey's Pillar. It can be read three quarters of a mile off. 
 There is no possibility of seeing the column without seeing 
 the name of Thompson, and consequently, without thinking of 
 Thompson. This idiot has embodied himself in the monument, 
 and perpetuates himself with it. What do I say .> He 
 annihilates it under the splendour of his majestic letters. Is 
 it not coining it rather strong to force future travellers to 
 think of you, and remember you ? All fools are more or less 
 Thompsons of Sunderland. In the course of one's life, how 
 many of them one meets in its most beautiful places, on 
 its purest angles } And then it is they who always annihilate 
 us ; they are so numerous, so happy, they return so often, they
 
 116 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 are so healthy. Travelling one meets numbers of them, and 
 we have ah-eady a fine collection in our memories ; but as they 
 pass quickly they simply amuse us. It is not so in ordinaiy 
 life, when they end by making you savage.' 
 
 At Constantinople Flaubert received a letter from his 
 mother concerning the little niece, who was now coming to 
 an age when her education demanded forethought. Gustave''s 
 reply is worth noting : — 
 
 'There are many things in the world, poor old woman, of 
 ■which you in your perfect honesty are ignorant. I who am 
 becoming a very great moralist, and who besides have always 
 plunged myself headlong into this kind of study, have lifted 
 not a few curtain-corners which concealed countless turpitudes. 
 Women are taught to lie in an infamous fashion. Their appren- 
 ticeship lasts all their life from the first lady's maid they are 
 given, to the last lover who comes upon them ; each and all 
 take pains to make them base, and then cry out against them ; 
 puritanism, prudery, bigotry, the system of seclusion, of narrow- 
 ness, have spoiled their nature, and destroy the most charming 
 creations of God in their bloom. I fear the moral corset — that 
 is all. First impressions are not effaced, you know. We carry 
 our past with us ; the whole of our life we smell of the nurse. 
 When I analyse myself I find still fresh in me, and with all 
 their influences (modified, it is true, by their mutual combin- 
 ation), the places of pere Langlois, of pere Mignot, of Don 
 Quixote, and my childhood's reveries in the garden beside 
 the window of the lecture room. In short : get some one to 
 teach her English, and the first general elements. Give all 
 the attention that you can to that yourself, and watch over the 
 character and good sense (I give the word its widest meaning) 
 of the person you select.' 
 
 There are a large number of people whose interest in their 
 acquaintance begins and ends with projects matrimonial, and 
 marriage is indeed an important part of life ; it is not, how- 
 ever, the whole of life. Flauberfs views on the subject at
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 117 
 
 this period, December 1850, were as follows. He is writing 
 to his mother : — 
 
 ' And when is my wedding to be ? When ? You ask me that 
 in connection with Ernest's marriage. Never, I hope. So far as 
 a man can answer for what he will do, I reply here in the nega- 
 tive. The contact of the world, with which I have rubbed 
 shoulders pretty closely for the last fourteen months, makes 
 me retire further and further into my shell. Uncle Parain is 
 mistaken when he affirms that travelling changes people ; as 
 for me, such as I started, such I return, only with some hairs 
 fewer on the outside of my head, and many more landscapes 
 inside. That is all ! As for my moral dispositions, I keep the 
 same till further orders ; and then, if it were necessary to reveal 
 the very bottom of my thoughts, and if the expression were 
 not in appearance too presumptuous, I should say, that I am 
 too old to change. I have passed the age. When a man has 
 lived, as I have, an inner life full of turbulent analysis, and 
 repressed impulses, when he has thus in turn excited and 
 calmed himself, and when he has spent his whole youth in 
 making his soul wheel and turn, as a rider his horse, which he 
 forces with the spur to gallop across the fields, to walk slowly, 
 to jump the ditches, to trot, to canter, the whole simply to 
 amuse himself, and learn more ; well, I would say, if he has not 
 broken his neck at the start, there is a very good chance that 
 he will not break it later on. I too, I am established, in the 
 sense that I have found my position, a centre of gravity. I do 
 not presume that any internal shock can make me change my 
 place and fall on the ground. Marriage would be for me a 
 horrible apostasy. Alfred's death has not effaced the recol- 
 lection of the irritation that his marriage caused me. It was 
 what the news of a great scandal caused by a bishop would be 
 to the devout. When a man wishes, be he small or great, to 
 concern himself with the works of God, he must begin, if only 
 from considerations of health, by putting himself in a position 
 in which he cannot be duped by them. You may paint a 
 picture of wine, love, women, glory, on condition, my good 
 friend, that you are neither a drunkard, nor a lover, nor a 
 husband, nor a soldier-boy. When a man is mixed with life, he
 
 118 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 sees it all, he suffers too much from it, or enjoys it too much. 
 In my opinion the artist is a monstrosity, something outside 
 nature, all the misfortunes with which Providence overwhelms 
 him, come to him from his persistence in denying this axiom ; 
 he suffers from it, and makes others suffer. On that point 
 question women who have loved poets, and men who have loved 
 actresses. Now (and this is the conclusion) I am resigned to 
 living, as I have lived, alone with a crowd of great men, who 
 take the place of a club to me, with my bear-skin, being a bear 
 myself, etc. I don't care a snap for the world, the future, the 
 what-will-people-say, for any establishment whatever, even for 
 a literary reputation, which has made me pass so many sleepless 
 nights in dreaming before now. That is what I am, that is my 
 character. 
 
 ' If, for instance, I know what has made me reel off this 
 couple of pages, poor dear old woman, may the devil fly away 
 with me ! No, no— when I think of your good face, so sad, so 
 loving, of the pleasure that I have in living with you, so full of 
 calm, so delightful, so grave, I see clearly that I shall never 
 love another woman, as I love you. There — you will never 
 have a rival ; don't be afraid ! The senses, a passing fancy, 
 will not take the place of that which remains enclosed in the 
 recesses of a triple sanctuary. They may perhaps get as far as 
 the threshold of the temple, but they will never enter in.' 
 
 Thereupon follows a rather unkind disquisition on poor 
 Ernest Chevalier, who is on the point of connnitting the 
 crime of matrimony. When his friends married, Flaubert 
 lost his head ; the subject was as annoying to him as to 
 Queen Elizabeth ; and he was apt to express himself in 
 language whose strength and unfairness were alike worthy 
 of that austere virgin. 
 
 After leaving Constantinople, Flaubert writes to 
 Bouilhet : — 
 
 * The East will soon be nothing but a question of sun. At 
 Constantinople most of the men are dressed in the European 
 fashion, operas are played, there are reading rooms, milliners' 
 shops, etc, A hundred years lience the harem, gradually
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 119 
 
 invaded by intercourse with Prankish ladies, will crumble to dust 
 of itself under the leading article and the comic opera. . . . Soon 
 the veil, already slighter and slighter, will pass from the faces 
 of the women, and with it Moslemism will fly away altogether. 
 The number of pilgrims to Mecca diminishes day by day ; the 
 ulemas fuddle themselves like vergers. Voltaire is talked of! 
 Everything here is breaking up, as with us. He who lives 
 longest will laugh most ! ' 
 
 At Athens the following scene occurred : — 
 
 ' The other day we had beside us at table a band of midship- 
 men from the English navy, from nine to fourteen years old, who 
 came calmly, like grown men, to give themselves a spree at the 
 hotel ; with their uniforms too big for them there could be 
 nothing more amusing, more exquisite. The smallest, sitting 
 by Maxime, and who was not higher than the table, lost his 
 long nose in his plate. These gentlemen toasted one another 
 with the dignity of Lords. They smoked cigars and drank 
 Marsala. My face interested them much ; they took me for a 
 Turk. They told the proprietor of the hotel that they were 
 very soriy to be going away the next day, as otherwise they 
 would have come to pay me a visit, to have a talk with me.' 
 
 Middies of nine years old are rather a startling pheno- 
 menon ; but this was in the pre-Britannia days. 
 
 As Flaubert approached home, the practice of moralising 
 grew upon him. He says, in writing to his mother from 
 Patras : — 
 
 ' The saddest thing of all is one day to become aware of the 
 collapse of an old friendship. Thanks to former sympathies, one 
 had faith in a community of sentiment, which no longer exists 
 One used to say to oneself : " When I need him, he will come 
 to help me." One calls, the friendly ear no longer understands 
 your language. From one man to another, from one woman to 
 another woman, from heart to heart, what gulfs ! The distance 
 from one continent to another is nothing in comparison. Do I 
 want you to throw yourself into the water if I fall in .'' Or to 
 defend me against assassins .'' I can swim, and there are no 
 assassins now. Sacrifices are not what the heart demands, but
 
 120 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 confidences. I ask you to love as I love, to weep as I weep, 
 and over the same things, to feel as I feel, that is all. There is 
 nothing more futile than those heroic friendships, which require 
 events to prove them. The difficulty is to find someone who 
 does not torture your nerves in the ordinary occurrences of life.' 
 
 Perhaps Maxime Ducanip might have found something to 
 say on this subject, for — 
 
 ' I am now working hard at doing the howling dervish. 
 Francis (the dragoman) gives me lessons as we ride. Maxime 
 is nearly bored to death ; none the less I go on. One evening 
 I literally got broken winded over it, and in the house where 
 we were sleeping, everybody came to the door to see what was 
 the matter. The sheick still goes on ; it is a healthy creation, 
 which time does not exhaust.' 
 
 Maxime, however, had his turn every now and then : — 
 
 ' As for me, my hair is going ; when you see me again I shall 
 be wearing a skull-cap ; I shall have the baldness of the office 
 clerk, of the worn-out notary, of all that is most inane in the 
 way of premature senility. I am quite miserable over it. 
 Maxime laughs at me, he may be right. It is a feminine senti- 
 ment, unworthy of a man, and a republican, I know ; but I feel in 
 this the first symptom of a decadence which humiliates me, and 
 of which I am only too well awai-e. I am getting fat. I am putting 
 on a stomach, and beginning to be loathsome. Perhaps soon I 
 shall be regretting my youth, and like Beranger's grandmother, 
 my lost time. Where are ye, blooming locks of my eighteen 
 years, ye who fell upon my shoulders with such hope, such pride .'' ' 
 
 By the time that Flaubert reached Rome, he had got 
 over his irritation at Ernest's marriage, and wrote him a 
 pleasant enough letter of congratulation : — 
 
 ' I think that you have taken the right road, be it said 
 between ourselves, and without complimenting you, and that 
 I — well, not that I have taken the wrong road, but that the 
 wrong road has taken me (my philosophical opinions not permit- 
 ting me, as the " gar9on " would say, to recognise that there 
 was any liberty or freedom of choice in the matter). . . . 
 
 ' Ah, when we Avere howling on that poor billiard table at the
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 121 
 
 Infirmary converted into a stage of which you provided the 
 scenery, who would have told us that to-day I should be at 
 Rome, that I should be coming out of St. Peter's at four o'clock 
 in the afternoon^ and that I should write to you ? Who would 
 further have told us that I should be bald, for you will see me 
 again with my head nearly bare ? In that I resemble Julius 
 Ceesar and a pumpkin, for I have become enormously fat in the 
 East. . . . Whatever may happen to you hereafter, remember, 
 dear old man, that you have over there on the edge of the 
 water, between the hillside and the river, an ear always open to 
 confidences, a friendly hand that would not fail you, and a 
 devotion which may be old, but is not aged.' 
 
 Rome impressed Flaubert, as it has impressed many 
 others. We go there most of us expecting to walk where 
 Horace walked, to stroll under the same porticos, to saunter 
 in the halls of the same baths, possibly to stroll in the 
 Campus Martius and watch the young men playing ball. 
 We find that the Rome of Cicero, of Horace, of Virgil, even 
 of Domitian, Aurelian, is the property of the antiquary, and 
 not of the ordinary traveller. Except the Pantheon, there 
 are no buildings at Rome which we see at all as the subjects 
 of Augustus saw them, and even that, how changed ! A 
 walk along the Roman Wall in England tells us as much, if 
 not more, of imperial Rome than a drive along the Via 
 Appia. On the other hand, mediaeval Rome — the Rome of 
 the Popes, the Rome of the Renaissance — meets us at every 
 turn ; though even that is much shorn of its splendours 
 since 1870. Two things attracted Flaubert at Rome, the 
 statuary and the pictures, — the masterpieces of ancient art, 
 and of the age of the Renaissance. St Peter*'s seemed to 
 him to have the cold unsympathetic magnificence of a new 
 tomb ; but he admits that the Parthenon had spoiled him 
 for most things in the Avay of building. 
 
 By May he was again home. In the summer the family 
 visited England ; it was the year of the first Exhibition.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 LIFE AT CROISSET MADAME LOUISE COLET 
 
 FiiOM the autumn of 1851 to his death in the spring of 1880 
 Flaubert's hfe was spent ahnost without interruption at 
 Croisset, in the laborious construction of his books. At the 
 time of the publication of Madame Bovary he passed some 
 months in Paris, and afterwards occasionally resided there 
 for the winter months, especially Avhen needing access to 
 libraries more complete than those of Rouen, or when the 
 plays of Louis Bouilhet were being rehearsed. In 1860 he 
 again made a short visit to the East, this time to the site 
 of ancient Carthage, in order to fix certain details for 
 Salammbo. In 1870-71 he abandoned his house to the 
 Prussians, who were quartered on him ; twice he accompanied 
 his mother to Vichy. These were the only serious inter- 
 ruptions to the secluded life of literary labour spent in the 
 study at Croisset. 
 
 Few men of letters have been so fortunate as Flaubert in 
 their domestic circumstances ; his father had left his widow 
 and children the possession of a moderate fortune ; his 
 mother lived only to secure to her adored son the repose 
 which was absolutely necessary to enable him to realise his 
 artistic ideals. 
 
 To the ordinary irritability of the artist, Flaubert added 
 the special weakness left by the breakdown of his nervous 
 
 122
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 123 
 
 system in 1846. At times his power of hearing became a 
 positive torture to him, and his extremely sensitive ear had 
 in all probability no small share in producing the fastidious- 
 ness M'hich made composition in his case so laborious. 
 
 Madame Caroline Commanville, Flaubert's niece, whose 
 mother died, as we have seen, at her birth, gives us some 
 very pleasant reminiscences of her uncle's home life at Croisset. 
 She describes the house, built originally somewhere about 
 1650 as a country residence for the monks of St. Ouen, 
 restored in extremely bad taste in accordance Avith the 
 artistic prejudices of the Fii-st Empire ; the garden sloping 
 down to the Seine, its terraces, its avenue of limes, the tulip- 
 tree opposite the study windows. The Abbe Prevost had, 
 for a long period, been the guest of the monks of St. Ouen, 
 and Flaubert flattered himself with the idea that Manon 
 Lescaut might have been written at Croisset. 
 
 'The habits of the house were subordinated to my uncle's 
 tastes, my grandmother having, so to say, no personal life ; she 
 lived in the happiness of her family. Her affection was alarmed 
 by the smallest symptom of ill-health, which she imagined she 
 discovered in her son ; her aim was to envelope him in an 
 atmosphere of perfect calm. In the morning it was forbidden 
 to make the smallest noise ; towards ten o'clock there was a 
 violent ring ; my uncle's room was entered, and then for the 
 first time everyone seemed to wake. The servant brought the 
 letters and papers, put on the table at the bedside a big glass of 
 water, very cold, and a pipe ready filled ; he then drew the 
 curtains, and the light poured in. My uncle took up his letters, 
 looked at the address, but rarely opened any of them before 
 having taken several puffs from his pipe, then, still reading, he 
 tapped at the partition to call his mother, who immediately ran 
 in to sit by his bed till he got up. 
 
 ' He dressed slowly, sometimes stopping to go and read over 
 again some passage in his compositions that interested him. 
 Though far from complicated his dress was never careless, and 
 his ideas of cleanliness were fastidious.
 
 lU LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' At eleven o'clock he came down to lunch, where my grand- 
 mother, uncle Parain, the governess and myself were already 
 assembled. We were all extremely fond of Uncle Parain ; he 
 spent a great part of the year with us. At this time (1852) my 
 uncle ate little, especially in the morning, believing that a full 
 diet produces dullness and indisposition to work ; hardly ever 
 any meat ; eggs, vegetables, a piece of cheese, or fruit, and a 
 cup of cold chocolate. At dessert, he used to light his pipe, a 
 little clay pipe, get up and go into the garden, whither we 
 followed him. His favourite walk was the terrace under the 
 rocks, shaded on one side by old lime trees cut straight like a 
 great wall. It led to a little summerhouse in the style of 
 Louis XV., whose windows looked upon the Seine. We rarely 
 went to the summerhouse after lunch. Avoiding the midday 
 sun, we used to climb to a spot called " The Mercury," because 
 of a statue of that god, by which it was once ornamented ; it 
 was a second avenue situated above the terrace, and to which a 
 charming path led, deeply shaded ; old yew trees in strange 
 shapes grew from the rocks, showing the bare roots, and their 
 ruinous trunks. Quite at the top of the path on a sort of 
 circular space, a bench was hidden under chestnut trees. 
 Through their branches the quiet water was seen, and large 
 bits of sky above, from time to time a cloud rapidly disappearing. 
 It was the smoke of a steam-boat ; immediately appeared 
 between the tall stems of the trees the pointed masts of ships 
 being towed up to Rouen ; often their number was seven or 
 nine. Nothing could be more majestic and beautiful than 
 these processions of floating houses, which spoke to you of 
 distant lands. Towards one o'clock a shrill whistle was heard ; 
 it was the " steamer," as the country folks say. Three times a 
 day this boat makes the passage from Rouen to La Bouille. 
 
 ' The signal for departure had been given. 
 
 ' " Come," my uncle would say, "come to lessons, my Caro," and 
 he, taking me by the hand, we would both go into his large 
 study, where the outer blinds, carefully kept closed, had not 
 allowed the heat to penetrate ; it was nice there, one breathed 
 a scent of oriental beads mixed with tliat of tobacco, and a 
 trace of perfumes coming through the half open door of the 
 dressing room. At one bound I used to fling myself on a great
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 125 
 
 white bear-skin which I worshipped : I used to cover its great 
 head with kisses. My uncle during this time would put his 
 pipe away on the chimney piece, select another, fill it, light it, 
 then seat himself on a green leather arm-chair at the other end 
 of the room ; he used to cross one leg over the other, lean back, 
 take a file, and polish his nails. " Let us see — are you there } 
 Well, what do you remember from yesterday ? "■ — " Oh, I know 
 the stoiy of Pelopidas and Epaminondas quite well." "Tell me 
 then." I would begin, then naturally get confused, or perhaps 
 I had forgotten. "I will tell it you again." I drew near] him, 
 and seated in front of him on a low chair, or on the divan, I 
 used to listen with palpitating interest to the stories, which he 
 made so amusing for me. 
 
 ' In this way he taught me the whole of ancient history, 
 bringing the facts into relation with one another ; making 
 reflections within my grasp, but always preserving truth, depth, 
 in his observations ; mature minds might have listened without 
 discovering anything childish in his instruction. I would 
 sometimes stop him to ask him: "Was he good.''" — and this 
 question applied to such pei'sons as Cambyses, Alexander, or 
 Alcibiades, caused him some embaiTassment. " Good . . . come, 
 these were not very particular gentlemen, what have you to do 
 with that ? " But I was not satisfied, and I thought that my 
 " old man " as I called him, ought to have known even the veiy 
 smallest details of the lives of the persons about whom he was 
 talking to me. 
 
 ' The history lesson finished, we passed to geography. He 
 would never have permitted me to learn from a book. " Images, 
 as much as possible," he would say, " that is the right way to 
 teach children." So we had cards, globes, games requiring 
 patience, which we made up and pulled to pieces together ; 
 then to explain the difference between an island, a peninsula, 
 a bay, a gulf, a promontory, he would take a bucket and a 
 shovel, and we made models after nature in a path in the 
 garden. 
 
 ' As I grew up the lessons became longer, more serious ; he 
 continued them to my seventeenth year, to my marriage. 
 When I was ten years old, he made me take notes while he 
 talked, and when my mind was capable of understanding it, he
 
 126 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 began to make me observe the artistic side in everything, above 
 all in my reading. 
 
 ' Often in the summer evenings we used to sit all together on 
 the balcony, with its graceful carvings ; and remained there 
 quiet for hours, hearing him talk ; the night would come on 
 little by little, the last passei-s-by had disappeared ; on the 
 towing-path opposite, the outline of a horse would be faintly 
 seen, drawing a barge, which glided on noiselessly ; the moon 
 began to shine, and its thousand reflections, like a dust of 
 diamonds, glittered at our feet ; a light mist spread over the 
 river, two or three boats put off from the shore. They were 
 eel-fishers, who were starting and shooting their bow-nets — my 
 grandmother, very delicate, would begin to cough, then my 
 uncle would say : " It is time to return to the Bovary." " The 
 Bovary " — what was it .'' I did not know. I respected this 
 name, these two words, like everything else that came from my 
 uncle ; I had a vague belief that it was the synonym for work, 
 and work, of course, was writing. As a matter of fact, it was 
 during these years, from 1852 to 1856, that he composed this 
 work.' 
 
 It is possible to know too much of the intimate life of 
 our great artists ; blundering humanity is always asking, 
 like little Caroline Hamard, ' was he good ? ' and has an ideal 
 of its own as to the nature of goodness. One of the first 
 demands that it makes of its artist is that he shall be a 
 ' good family man."* And though the facts have shown, over 
 and over again, that the artistic temperament is incom- 
 patible with the ordinary conditions of domestic life — that 
 the home has to be made to the artist, and not the artist 
 to the home — our chosen prophets share the fate of Cass- 
 andra the moment it is discovered that they are anything 
 short of exemplary at home. That the man of infinitely 
 keen perception will also be the man of delicately sensitive 
 nerves ; that the sedentary man will in all probability suffer 
 agonies through the failure of his digestive organs ; that
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 121 
 
 there is little reserve energy left in the man A\ho has just 
 written a chapter requiring close thought, or played a con- 
 certo ; that the man who can describe in the most forcible 
 language the feelings of others, will also have the gift of 
 describing his own, — all these things, plain, obvious, well- 
 known as they are, count for nothing Avhen an artist is 
 weighed in the balance of public opinion, Carlyle, once the 
 divinity of hydropathic society, the rival of Wordsworth in 
 the Pantheon of the Middle-class — where is he now ? It is 
 all very well to have written the Life of Frederick the Great ^ 
 to have whitewashed Cromwell, to have exalted Burns, to 
 have published an autobiography full of comfortable long 
 words, to have adorned it with talk of Baphometic fire- 
 baptism and fuliginosity — the Middle-class has reversed its 
 verdict, since Mr. Froude''s indiscretion turned away from 
 its idol, with the remark : ' Carlyle, — oh, that ''s the chap 
 that bullied his wife ; no, I don't read liim ! ' 
 
 There will be no occasion to cry ' Shame ** upon Flaubert in 
 the matter of his domestic relations. Though his letters 
 continually betray the artisfs sensitiveness, described with 
 the artisfs skill, we know that his irritable nerves never led 
 him to any want of outward respect, or inward considera- 
 tion, to his mother, or any sharpness to the little girl, whom 
 he patiently taught. 
 
 On the other hand, Flauberfs home made itself to him. 
 What his life would have been, had his domesticities been 
 controlled by a wife jealous of his books, or bent on leading 
 a life of her own, it is easy to surmise. Imagine Mrs. Carlyle 
 living in the seclusion of Croisset ; forced to submit to those 
 prodigious jokes ; to the weekly visits of Louis Bouilhet ; to 
 endless withering strictures upon middle-class prejudices, and 
 dearly loved habits ; to a husband, who came worn out to 
 bed every morning at four, and did not rise till ten ; who
 
 128 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 was known throughout the country-side as ' that queer 
 Mr. Gustave '' ; and who frequently appeared at his window 
 robed in a vohiminous dressing-gown, in full sight of pass- 
 ing steamers ; who was so tortured by drawing-room con- 
 versation, as to experience actual bodily pain from it ; who 
 worked noisily, groaning, howling, chanting the newly 
 finished phrases, or even bursting into tears of despair. 
 What a jeremiad she would have bestowed on us ! 
 
 To his servants Flaubert was an indulgent, and even an 
 affectionate master ; his old nurse ' M'amselle Julie ' lived 
 with him all his life, and survived him by two years ; it is no 
 exaggeration to say that she worshipped the ground he trod 
 on. When he went to live in Paris, he took with him one 
 ' Narcisse,"* who had been a servant of his father s, — retired, 
 married, begotten five or six children, turned cultivator of 
 the soil ; he did not, however, hesitate for a moment to 
 leave wife and family, and follow ' M"'sieu Gustave "* to Paris. 
 Flaubert''s friends used to amuse themselves with the remarks 
 and reports of Narcisse ; they used to send him their books 
 to read. He would be found seated in the study, or in front 
 of the bookcase ; a feather broom under his arm, a book in 
 his hand ; he would be reading aloud at the top of his voice 
 in imitation of his master. On one occasion he came home 
 completely drunk. Flaubert found him seated, or rather 
 collapsed, on a kitchen chair ; he helped him to get to his 
 room, and lie down on the bed ; then Narcisse, in a suppli- 
 catino- voice said : ' Oh, sir, put the completion on your 
 kindness : pull off my boots for me !"" which the indulgent 
 master accordingly did. Lyrics and nips proved, however, 
 too much for Narcisse in the long run, and he was forced to 
 return to the bosom of his family, and cultivation of the 
 soil. 
 
 During the period of the composition of Madame Bovary
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 129 
 
 (1852-1856) we see Flaubert chiefly through his correspond- 
 ence with the Parisian lady, whose acquaintance we have 
 already made. From September 1851 up to April 1854 there 
 are only seven letters to other persons. Bouilhet was living 
 at Rouen during the greater part of this period, so that 
 correspondence Avith him was superfluous ; and a coolness 
 had arisen with Maxime Ducamp. It was not till after the 
 publication of Madame Bovary that Flaubert had many 
 correspondents. 
 
 The lady in question was a certain Madame Louise Colet, 
 who kept a literary, somewhat Bohemian salon in Paris ; and 
 this is how she appeared, and how her connection with 
 Flaubert appeared to the cold world. Maxnue Ducamp, 
 speaking of the two books, Elle et Lui and Lui et Elle, which 
 contain the indiscreet revelations of Georges Sand on the one 
 hand, and Paul de Musset on the other, writes as follows : — 
 
 ' But what are we to think of Louise Colet, who intervenes, 
 elbowing herself forward, who pushes herself between the 
 author of Rolla and the author of Consuelo, and who cries 
 triumphantly " Here am I ! " It was absolutely necessary that 
 the world should know that Alfred de Musset had had a fancy 
 for a literary woman without talent : Louise Colet midertook to 
 enlighten the world. After Elle et Lui, after Lid et Elle, Louise 
 Colet published Lui. Ltd is Alfred de Musset, whom one 
 resists, because one wishes to remain faithful to an adored 
 Leonce ; Leonce is Gustave Flaubert. Ah ! I know the story, 
 I have been saturated with it to nausea. I have more than 
 three hundred letters, which Louise Colet wrote me, because 
 she had taken me into her confidence about the attentions with 
 which she persecuted Gustave Flaubert, who could no longer 
 put up with them. 
 
 ' Her book Lid is worse than a lying fiction ; it is a 
 systematic perversion of the truth. The mask which conceals 
 the characters is so transparent that they are recognisable ; 
 all those with whom she came into contact in life, all those 
 who had not kept her at a distance, all of them she has 
 
 I
 
 130 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 drowned in her untruthful prose. Here is a fact which I ought 
 to set right, for she has changed its character. A person, 
 who was of some consideration in his time, whom she calls 
 Duchemin, and whose real name I will not disclose, fell in love 
 with her, and declared his passion. In Ltd slie revels in the 
 details of this adventure, and — to quote her own words : " The 
 old lunatic pronouncing these words flung himself at my feet ; 
 he seized the floating folds of my dress between his knees as in 
 a vice, and taking from an inner pocket a dirty pocket-book, he 
 opened it, and pulled several bank-notes out of it. ' Let a 
 friend have his way,' said he to me, holding them out to me, 
 ' and bestow just a little love on one who feels such a burning 
 passion for you.' He had the actions of a grotesque Tartufe. 
 For a moment I thought that my hilarity was getting the 
 better of my contempt ; but my indignation was stronger still ; 
 with the back of my left hand I hit away the pocket-book, 
 which went and fell by the fire, with the other I gave the old 
 fool tottering on his knees such a violent push, that he rolled 
 over backwards, on the carpet. His first care was, not to get 
 up, but hurriedly to reach out his hand after the gaping pocket- 
 book, which was touching the warm ashes, and might have 
 caught fii*e. I admit that I should have been enraptured to see 
 those insolent bank-notes blazing. I invent nothing in the 
 scene that I describe." 
 
 ' True, she invents nothing, but she omits to say, that two of her 
 friends hidden behind a glass door covered with curtains were in- 
 visible spectators of this interview, and that their presence was 
 not perhaps without some influence in producing the splendid 
 gesture, which pushed the bank-notes aside, whose figure came to 
 five hundred francs. One of those present told me the story, and 
 was sufficiently humiliated at the part he had been caused to play. 
 
 * In this pamphlet, in which hate and envy of Georges Sand 
 break out at every line, Louise Colet is nothing less than a 
 marchioness descended from champions of old, ruined by an 
 unjust law-suit, and forced to make an income from the 
 poetical talents with which nature has largely gifted her ; she 
 is inspii-ed to such an extent and so naturally that in her walks 
 with Alfred de Musset, they sport together upon the turf of 
 Helicon, and speak nothing but verse. We are far out of the
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 131 
 
 record. She said she was bom at Aix in 1815, and asserted 
 that her father had been drawing master at the Lyons School ; 
 she was proud of it, and signed herself Louise Colet, nee Revoil, 
 till the epoch when this name was compromised in a non- 
 literary adventure. In fact, she was born at Aix, September 17, 
 1810. Her father was Antoine Revoil, postal superintendent; 
 Pierre Revoil the painter, who enjoyed some celebrity, was only 
 her cousin. Her husband, whom she always abused, and of 
 whom she has spoken in L^ii in terms quite unmerited, was an 
 excellent man, an impassioned lover of music, professor at the 
 Conservatoire, gentle, and provided with a patience which 
 succeeded in never breaking down. 
 
 'There are people who try to get themselves talked about 
 in a certain way, there are those who wish to get themselves 
 talked about, no matter how. Louise Colet was one of the 
 latter class ; she had a genius for advei'tisement, and shrank 
 from nothing which might awaken attention. She had her 
 portrait published in " The Beautiful Women of Paris," between 
 a music-hall singer and a bonnet-maker. She was pretty after 
 all, fairly well-formed, and with a curious contrast between her 
 features, which were refined, and her walk, which was like a 
 man's. Her clumsy extremities, rasping voice, revealed a 
 substratum of vulgarity, to which her work still further testified. 
 
 ' The high opinion that she had of her own beauty, absolutely 
 rendered her ugly ; she admired herself to the point of being 
 displeasing. Her eyes lowered, her mouth formed in the shape 
 of a heart, she would assume an air of candour to say : " You 
 know that the arms of the Venus of Milo have been discovered ?" 
 "Why, where .^" "In the sleeves of my dress." Louis 
 Bouilhet used to say : " She has a natural want of naturalness." 
 
 " She has told in prose and verse the story of her intimacy 
 with Gustave Flaubert, whom she has outraged and calumniated 
 at her will. I never could understand how it was, that Flaubert, 
 a bom literary man, a solitary worker, a chaste man, did not 
 turn from this literary virago. Their meeting took place in 
 August (read " end of July ") 1 846 in Pradier's studio, while I 
 was at Vichy. Pradier, not meaning anything by it, had said 
 to Louise Colet : " You see that tall fellow there ; he wishes to 
 be a literary man, you should give him some advice." Those
 
 132 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 who knew Flaubert^ can imagine the kind of hearing he gave 
 to such a remark. A pupil Hke this, very handsome, veiy tall, 
 very vigorous, was not likely to be unpleasing to the lady whom 
 he used to call " the Muse." She used to say to Pradier : " My 
 dear Phidias ! " Pradier would answer : " My dear Sappho ! " 
 and, joking apart, they had these ways of treating one another 
 as demi-gods. Flaubert smiled at it, but Sappho was skilful, 
 and " the tall fellow, who wanted to be a literary man " was not 
 sufficiently master of himself for self-defence ; he failed in 
 resolution, and had cause to be sorry for it. He had reckoned 
 that this would be a freak without consequences, one of those 
 agreeable, common-place incidents, which have no future, 
 because there is nothing to justify them ; he had thought that 
 Paris and Croisset were far enough apart for the distance to 
 give him some repose. He was mistaken. 
 
 ' Masterful, with no respect for work, insatiable, and boasting 
 of the fact, she persecuted Flaubert He was afraid of her; 
 when he came to Paris, he used to hide, and lower the blinds 
 of his carriage. Sometimes he laughed at it, most often he 
 was vexed. She would watch him, follow him, wait for him at 
 the doors of houses, where he was calling. One evening, she 
 forced an entrance into a private room at the Trois Freres 
 Provenqaux, raging, ready to kill her rival. She was greeted 
 with an explosion of laughter ; Louis de Cormenin, Bouilhet, 
 Flaubert and I were dining together, and had fled from the 
 public room in order to be able to talk more freely. One day 
 when Flaubert was starting for Rouen, she penetrated into the 
 waiting room at the station, and made such a tragical scene, 
 that the railway servants were obliged to interfere. Flaubert 
 was maddened, and implored for mercy ; it was never granted 
 him. Among his papers must have been found a note-book 
 full of verses written in a small obscure, entangled ill-formed 
 hand. It is a poem that the Muse composed in a thundering 
 style on a visit of twenty-four hours, which she had made to 
 Mantes in Flaubert's company, whom she compares to "an 
 indomitable buffalo of the wilds of America," while she assimi- 
 lates herself to La Valliere and Fontanges. Flaubert smiled at 
 this clumsy poetry in which the transparent images struggled 
 to reveal what they should have concealed ; but at heai't he
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 133 
 
 was flattered by it. However, he was afraid of scoffs, and 
 never ventured to show this epithalamium to Louis Bouilhet. 
 
 'There are women, who are Hke medlai's, and who become 
 good as they become old ; this was not the case with Louise 
 Colet ; she never wearied in evil-speaking. When the success 
 of Madame Bovaiy made Gustave Flaubert's talent and 
 reputation notox-ious, the young man to whom Pradier had 
 pledged her to give advice, she was exasperated. She 
 published a sonnet to proclaim that the book was written in 
 the style of a bagman; she credited Flaubert with the low 
 cunning of a Norman, and declared that his triumphs were the 
 result of puffs, Avhich he had had Avritten for him in the papers. 
 She ought to have known better than anybody that puffs are 
 not adequate to establish a reputation, and do not give talent 
 to those who have it not. Her resentment passed all bounds ; 
 in her romance Lui, she treacherously reproaches Leonce 
 (Flaubert) for not having sent her 10,000 francs in exchange 
 for an album, which I have turned over, and which was worth 
 fifty crowns. She was often in want of money, for her works 
 were not much run after ; she was not rich, her husband had 
 died in 1851 and her income had not increased.' 
 
 In the end, the good lady took to writing fashion articles, 
 puffing milliners, glove-makers, perfumers, and the like. She 
 used sometimes to be paid in kind, and would then go about 
 among her acquaintances trying to dispose of bonnets, scarves, 
 hygienic garters, and what not. She died in 1875, having 
 made a desperate effort to recapture Flaubert after the publi- 
 cation of Salammbo, and having written a violent attack on 
 him in prose. La Servante, in which she did not even spare his 
 mother, whom she had once interviewed stormily at Croisset. 
 Maxime Ducamp suggests as an epitaph : ' Here lies the 
 woman who compromised Victor Cousin, made Alfred de 
 Musset ridiculous, calumniated Gustave Flaubert, and tried 
 to assassinate Alphonse Karr : Reqiiiescat in Pace.'' 
 
 Upon this story there is a good deal to be said. The 
 first and most obvious reflection that suggests itself, is that
 
 134. LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 a man, who tells a tale without knowing all the facts, runs 
 some considerable risk of being mistaken. When Maxima 
 Ducamp published his Souvenirs Litteraires, not even the 
 first volume of Flauberfs correspondence had appeared ; 
 from which alone it is sufficiently evident that Flaubert was 
 not so much the victim of irresolution as he afterwards 
 appeared to be ; no man was ever in love, if he was not. 
 The first intei-view at Mantes took place at the end of 
 September 1846, and was the occasion of the poem alluded 
 to ; after Flauber^s return from the East (between 1851- 
 1854) there were other similar meetings ; to which the 
 second volume of letters testifies. Up to April 1854 
 Flaubert was in frequent correspondence with Madame 
 Colet, and visited her, from time to time, in Paris. Louis 
 Bouilhet, at the end of that period living in Paris, used also 
 to visit her, and keep Flaubert informed of her well-being. 
 We do not know the precise moment at which Flaubert 
 definitely broke with her. We see the rupture impending in 
 the letters of the spring of 1854 ; and on the 5th August of 
 the same year, Flaubert wrote to Louis Bouilhet : — 
 
 ' In the midst of my corporal anguish (he had been suffering 
 from a severe inflammation of the tongue) and by way of farce to 
 enliven me, a wild letter fell upon me from Paris. The .... 
 was losing her head. All was discovered ; her position com- 
 promised, etc. I must write, I must this, that, and the other.' 
 
 It is easy enough to supply the word missing. The Muse is, 
 by this time, too well known to all of us to be concealed. Later 
 in the same year, in the winter, he asked Louis Bouilhet : — 
 
 ' How is that poor Muse .-* What do you make of her .'' What 
 does she say ? She writes to me less often. I think that in her 
 heart she is tired of me. Whose is the fault ? Fate. For my- 
 self my conscience is perfectly calm on the subject, I do not find 
 that I have anything to reproach myself with. Any other in 
 her place would be tired too. I have nothing lovable about
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 135 
 
 me, and I say that in the deepest sense of the word. She is 
 perhaps the only woman who ever loved me. It is a curse that 
 Heaven has sent upon her .'' If she dared, she would declare 
 that I do not love her. She is mistaken, however.' 
 
 After this the Muse disappears from the correspondence, 
 except that in 1859 Flaubert recommends Ernest Feydeau 
 to read Lui, and La Servante (poem) ; also Une Histoire de 
 Soldat, by the same author, with the comment : ' You cannot 
 picture to yourself such pitiful vulgarity ' ; and in 1876 he 
 wrote to Madame Roger des Genettes : — 
 
 ' You have very coiTCctly guessed the whole effect that the 
 death of the poor Muse has had upon me. The recollection of 
 her thus revived made me return upon the course of my life. 
 But your friend has become more stoical since the last year. I 
 have trampled so many things down in order to be able to live. 
 In short, after a whole afternoon spent with days that are gone, 
 I determined not to think any more about it, and set to work 
 again. Yet another end.' 
 
 Thus the appearance of the whole affair is changed. This 
 was not a mere light escapade, to which neither party 
 attached any importance. It is true that very soon the 
 passion was all on the side of the lady, and that the 
 gentleman did his best to restrict the connection within 
 the decent limits of an intimate literary friendship ; and 
 though the end of the correspondence has been suppressed, 
 and possibly other letters unflattering to Madame Colefs self- 
 esteem, it is significant that neither during the three months'' 
 tour in Brittany, nor during the longer Eastern tour, did she 
 receive, or at any rate keep, any letters from Flaubert. 
 
 Meanwhile, as to the lady herself, it is sufficient to read 
 La Servante (prose) to be convinced that Maxime Ducamp 
 is not over severe. What are we to think of a woman over 
 fifty, who writes the story of her own violent passion for a
 
 136 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 man ten years younger than herself — a story well known to 
 her contemporaries — almost without disguise, and puts it in 
 the mouth of her maid, so that she may be able to indulge 
 herself in lavish praises of her own beauty ? She even de- 
 scribes her visit to Madame Flaubert, whose icy demeanour on 
 the occasion we can imagine, and makes a great grievance out 
 of the fact that she was not invited to stay the night, though 
 she had a cab in attendance and the faithful serving-maid. 
 
 Her life of Madame du Chatelet betrays the same innate 
 vulgarity of mind ; she could not write a page without 
 thinking of herself and obtruding herself upon her reader. 
 Her own relations with Victor Cousin are tacitly appealed 
 to, as she tells the story of Voltaire. 
 
 Then how came Flaubert to fall in love with her ? How 
 does any human being come to fall in love with another 
 human being ? The question is unanswerable ; our friends'* 
 marriages and love affairs are a perpetual cause of amaze- 
 ment to us, and always will be. 
 
 Meanwhile, Maxime Ducamp's story, however truthful in 
 the main, necessarily perverts the significance of the facts. 
 Madame Colet was not, in 1846, so obviously what she 
 showed herself to be in 1856. The story as told by Ducamp 
 is told by the light of subsequent knowledge of Madame 
 Colet, and in ignorance of great part of the relation between 
 her and Flaubert. 
 
 The year 1 846 was Flauberfs year of trouble : his father 
 had died, his sister had died, his own health was an ever- 
 present nightmare. The friendship with Louis Bouilhet was 
 only in its infancy, and it was the nature of the man to 
 demand a strong affection ; he was bound to expand, to 
 pour out his hopes, his sorrows, his literary projects, his 
 temporary annoyances into some sympathetic ear ; his sister 
 had been the intimate companion of his life ; her marriage
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 137 
 
 and death left him stranded. It is true that there was 
 Maxime Dueamp ; but, just at this time, Maxime Ducamp 
 was away from Paris, and, further, Flauberfs relation with 
 Ducamp was always rather that of the person who lets 
 himself be loved, than that of the one who loves. Ducamp 
 tried to control and guide him. Flaubert was grateful for 
 his affection, returned it in his boisterous way, but was 
 never quite satisfied with it ; there was always something in 
 Ducamp rather irritating to him. Thus, when Flavibert 
 was in Paris in July 1846, he was ready to fall at the feet 
 of almost any Avoman Avho betrayed a liking for him, and he 
 was particularly susceptible to the charms of a clever woman ; 
 by far the larger number of his letters were written to 
 women. We have seen how Flaubert met Victor Hugo at 
 Pradier''s ; Madame Colet had contrived to hook herself on to 
 Victor Hugo ; she would not appear to Flaubert as a literary 
 virago in 1846, but rather as a brilliant and beautiful 
 woman, occupying a prominent place in the first literary 
 society in Paris ; he was then the aspirant, she had arrived. 
 An enthusiastic admirer (of literature ?) had caused her 
 complete works to be printed in large-paper quarto volumes, 
 and published twenty-five copies for private circulation. 
 Victor Hugo Avrote letters to her, beginning ' O sister ! "■ 
 She had been addressed by a poet as ' Penserosa."' Flaubert 
 wanted a woman to be his literary companion, and here 
 was the one who, after Georges Sand, seemed to him to 
 occupy the highest place in letters, ready to be that 
 companion — nay, more, to bestow her love upon him. 
 
 There was also in Flaubert, when confronted with the 
 practical world, a simplicity strangely in contrast with the 
 minuteness of his observation. His mind, while recording 
 what was passing around hira, did not immediately draw 
 conclusions. He mentally photographed the external world.
 
 138 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 but did not develop the photograph till afterwards. To 
 the hundred little gestures by which character is revealed in 
 daily intercourse, he was at the time blind ; it did not occur 
 to him to question anybody ""s motives for being kind to him ; 
 and this big lion was particularly fond of being stroked the 
 right way. But on any literary question, he was, as a 
 rule, more than wide awake. Why then did he not at once 
 see through the shallowness of Madame Colefs literary 
 capacity ? This is due to the curious way in which he 
 combined his literary admiration with his affection. He 
 loved Louis Bouilhet, as much as one man can love another, 
 therefore Louis Bouilhet was not only a poet, but the poet ; 
 he fell in love with Madame Colet, and therefore swallowed 
 her vulgar verses whole, as long as his passion lasted. His 
 disillusionment with regard to her began in the region of 
 letters ; and he did not break with her permanently till she 
 forced him to see in her a rival, not only to his mother, but 
 to Madame Bovary. It is this which gives the episode more 
 than a gossipy interest. Flauberfs fidelity to art was tested 
 by it ; and he came unscathed out of the ordeal. It con- 
 firmed him in his determination not to marry ; and there 
 can be little doubt but that many pages of Madame Bovary 
 would have been less well written had it not been for this 
 experience. It is a curious fact that Madame Colet was of 
 the same age as the original of Madame Arnoux, the heroine 
 of Flaubert's sentimentalities at Trouville, and must have 
 borne a strong personal resemblance to her. 
 
 In dealing with Flaubert's correspondence after this period, 
 and especially his correspondence with Madame Colet, the 
 (question arises as to whether it would not be advisable to make 
 a digest of the whole ; extract from the mass of letters all 
 that is valuable in the way of opinion ; give examples of 
 characteristic forms of statement, and transitions of thought ;
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 139 
 
 in a word, create a systematic compendium of maxims of 
 Gustave Flaubert. The reasons for not adopting such a 
 course are obvious. The letters, not being written for 
 publication, are to some extent incoherent. Flaubert, after 
 a hard day's work sought relaxation in con-espondence ; he 
 Avrote as though he were communing with himself; he was 
 at no pains to measure his statements, to refrain from 
 repetitions. It would, however, be practically impossible 
 to make a digest of the letters without to some extent 
 assuming- the office of critic ; and criticism on what was 
 never intended to be published is out of place. The value 
 of the letters as a human document lies precisely in the fact 
 that they were thrown off unconsciously ; and give us, 
 without any concealment, without any straining for effect, 
 the passing feeling of the man who wrote them. They give 
 us more. If his friends are to be believed, Flaubert talked to 
 them much as he wrote to them ; and it is from the letters 
 that we are able to draw conclusions as to the fascination 
 which the personality of the man had for those who knew 
 him intimately, and as to the invigorating talk which he 
 fearlessly flung out of him. 
 
 On the other hand, to reproduce all that has been 
 published of the correspondence would be to weary the 
 reader with repetition. Therefore, those passages have been 
 selected for translation which seemed to bear upon features 
 of his life interesting to students of human nature, and the 
 extracts have been strung together in order of time. Any 
 other manipulation would destroy the chief charm of the 
 letters, their fresh personal note ; while the perpetual inter- 
 vention of the editor would be tiresome. 
 
 From all points of view it would be a grievous error to 
 attempt to construct a Flaubertian system. No man ever 
 had a greater detestatiom of dogma ; and he was extremely
 
 140 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 angry when his name was mentioned as the leader of a 
 school. He was at no pains to formulate a set of literary 
 doctrines in spite of his readiness to thunder on the text of 
 ' Art for Arfs sake "* ; and, least of all, should a serious philo- 
 sophical system be looked for in his private correspondence. 
 
 The letters to Madame Colet at this period, 1851-4, dealt 
 chiefly with literary questions, and the agonies which 
 Flaubert experienced in writing Madame Bovary ; there 
 were also a few passages, in which his deeper personality 
 revealed itself. As his first letter to her, after his return 
 from the East, is a reply, Ave may presume that it was the 
 lady who resumed the correspondence. There is evidence 
 in one of the letters that he tried to break with her when 
 leaving France ; he did not go to bid her farewell. There 
 is no allusion to the death of her husband in any of the 
 letters ; but we know that he died in 1851. Is it possible 
 that she formed some hope of finding him a successor, and 
 thus was led to reopen the intimacy ? 
 
 ' There are in me, speaking of literature, two distinct men, 
 one who is taken by resounding cries, lyricism, great eagle 
 flights, by all the sonority of phrases, elevations of the ideal ; 
 another who works and worries into the truth, as far as he can, 
 who loves to bring the small fact to book as exhaustively as the 
 big one, who Avould like to make you feel the things that he 
 describes, alinost materially. This latter is fond of laughter, 
 and delights in the animal side of man. 
 
 ' What seems fine to me, what I would like to write, 
 would be a book about nothing, a book without any external 
 connection, which would support itself of itself by the internal 
 force of its style, as the earth is held in the air without being 
 supported ; a book which would have hardly any subject — or at 
 least in which the subject would be almost invisible. The most 
 beautiful works are those in whicli there is least matter ; the 
 closer the expression comes to the thought, the closer the word 
 adheres to it, and disappears, the more beautiful it is.
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 141 
 
 * It is for this reason that there are neither good nor bad 
 subjects, and that one might ahnost establish an axiom, looking 
 from the point of view of pure art, to the effect that there is no 
 subject ; style being in itself an independent manner of seeing 
 things ; I should require a whole book to develojje what I 
 mean.' 
 
 This literary doctrine recurs again and again ; and to the 
 ordinary sinner is certainly incomprehensible. 
 
 Music seems to fit the definition on which Flaubert tries 
 to insist. Strings of words, whose mere sounds suggest 
 certain conditions of thought, are an impossible conception. 
 The idea arose partly from Flauberfs own personal diffi- 
 culties in composition and sensitive ear to begin with, and is 
 something different from his protest against ' the novel with 
 a purpose,"" though closely allied to it, and often confused 
 Avith it; as also from his frequently expressed demand for 
 the impersonal in art. 
 
 ' You tell me that you begin to understand my life ; it would 
 be necessary to know its origins. Some day I shall describe 
 myself quite at my ease ; but at that time I shall no longer 
 enjoy the necessary strength. I have no horizon in front of me, 
 except that which surrounds me at this present. I consider 
 myself as being forty years old, fifty, sixty. My life is a wound- 
 up machine, which turns regularly ; what I do to-day, I shall 
 do to-morrow, I did it yesterday, I have been the same man 
 for ten years ; it has turned out, that my organisation is a 
 system, the whole without any deliberately adopted purpose, 
 by the tendency of things in general, which makes the white 
 bear inhabit the ice, and the camel walk on the sand. I am a 
 man-pen, I am by it, by reason of it, in relation to it, and much 
 more with it. You will see from the beginning of next winter 
 an apparent change. I shall spend three wintei's in wearing 
 out some pairs of shoes ; then I shall return to my lair, where 
 I shall die obscure or illustrious. Manuscript or in pi'int, there is 
 however one thing that torments me, the want of knowledge of 
 my measure. This man, who says he is so calm, is full of doubts
 
 142 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 about himself, he would like to know just how far he can rise, 
 and the exact power of his muscles. But to ask that is to be 
 very ambitious, for the exact knowledge of one's strength is 
 perhaps nothing other than genius.' 
 
 The astuteness with which Madame Colet beguiled her 
 admirer may be infen-ed from the following : — 
 
 ' A fortnight ago on the Pont Royal on our way to dinner you 
 said a thing which pleased me much, to wit, " that you were 
 beginning to perceive that there is nothing artistically more 
 feeble, than to introduce one's personal sentiments in art." ' 
 
 There is nothing more flattering to the human male than 
 to make a convert of an adoring female ; the experienced 
 Muse had learned her lesson. 
 
 Talking of De Musset he says : — 
 
 ' Nerves, magnetism, there you have poetry ! No ; poetry 
 has a calmer base ; if having sensitive nerves were enough to 
 make a poet, I should be a greater poet than Shakespeare, than 
 Homer ; the latter I picture to myself as far from being a 
 nervous man. This confusion is a sacrilege ; I can say something 
 on the subject, I, who have heard people speaking in a low 
 voice thirty yards off me through closed doors ; I, whose viscera 
 have been seen through my skin, leaping and bounding, 
 who have at times felt in the space of a second thousands of 
 thoughts, images, combinations of all kinds, Avhich threw into 
 my brain all at once, as it were, all the lighted squibs of a set 
 piece of fireworks ; but these are excellent moving subjects of 
 conversation. Poetiy is not a debility of the mind, and these 
 nervous susceptibilities are. This faculty of abnormal perception 
 is a weakness. I explain myself. 
 
 ' If I had had a sounder brain, I should not have made 
 myself ill over reading law, and wearying myself ; I should have 
 made some profit out of it, instead of getting hann. The 
 vexation instead of staying in my head passed into my limbs, 
 and made them writhe in convulsions. It was a deviation. 
 There often appear children, who are made ill by music ; they 
 have great capacity for it, retain airs on the first hearing, 
 become excited over playing the piano, their heai-ts beat, they
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 143 
 
 become thin, pale, fall sick, and their poor nerves, like those 
 of dogs, writhe in suffering at the sound of the notes. These 
 are not the future Mozarts ; the vocation has been misplaced ; 
 the idea has passed into the flesh, where it remains barren, and 
 the flesh wastes ; neither genius nor health are the outcome. 
 
 ' The same thing in art ; passion does not make verses, and 
 the more personal you are, the more feeble you are.' 
 
 Flaubert rarely speaks of his nervous malady ; but he 
 carefully studied it, and therefore the ideas that he formed 
 about it are interesting, though they may have no value to 
 physicians. 
 
 ' You tell me that if you were a man, you would be furious 
 at seeing a woman prefer a mediocrity to yourself. O Woman ! 
 O poetess ! How little you know of the hearts of males ! By 
 the age of eighteen a man has already received so many knock- 
 down blows in this particular, that he has become callous. Men 
 treat women, as we treat the public ; with much outward defer- 
 ence, and a sovereign inward contempt. Love humiliated 
 becomes the pride of the libertine. I believe that success with 
 women is generally a sign of mediocrity, and yet, it is what we 
 all envy, the crown of everything else ; but one does not like to 
 admit it, and as Ave consider the objects of their preference very 
 much beneath us, we arrive at the conviction that they are 
 stupid, which is not the case. We judge from our point of 
 view, they from theirs ; beauty is not to a woman the same that 
 it is to a man ; they will never agree on that subject, nor on 
 the question of mind, sentiment, nor anything else.' 
 
 Again, on the question of Art : — 
 
 ' The time of the beautiful is passed. Humanity free to re- 
 turn to it, has nothing, for the present quarter of an hour, to do 
 with it. The further it goes the more scientific will art become ; 
 and in the same way science vdll be more artistic ; the two 
 after having been separated at the base will meet at the 
 summit. 
 
 ' I can conceive, however, a style which would be beautiful, 
 which some one will produce one of these days, in ten years, or
 
 144 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ten centuries, and which will be as rhythmical as verse, precise 
 as the language of science, and which will have undulations, 
 modulations like these of a violoncello, flashes of fire. A style 
 which would enter into the idea like the stroke of a stiletto, 
 and on which our thought would sail over gleaming surfaces as 
 when one sails in a boat with a good wind to one's back. Prose 
 is born of yestei'day, that has to be said. Verse is the form, the 
 appropriate form, of the literature of antiquity. All the 
 combinations of prosody have been made, those of prose are 
 still to make.' 
 
 Occasionally Flaubert makes a strange muddle over a 
 pretty speech, as in the case of the bed, which he destined 
 for his parents : — 
 
 ' I have always lived without diversions, I should require 
 them huge. I was born with a heap of vices, which have never 
 poked their noses out of the window. I like wine, and I 
 do not drink. I am a gambler, and I have never touched a 
 card. Debauchery pleases me, and I live like a monk. I am 
 at bottom a mystic, and I believe in nothing. But I love you, 
 my dear heart, and I greet you tenderly. Ti'uly, if I were to 
 see you every day, perhaps I should love you less ; but no, 
 there is still a long time before us, you live in the back-shop of 
 my heart, and you go out on Sundays.' 
 
 The Muse was not content with playing the part of Sally 
 in our Alley ; she wished to incorporate herself more closely 
 with Flaubert, — to be received, so to speak, by the family. 
 
 ' Yet another word with reference to my mother. No doubt 
 she would have received you in her best manner, if you had 
 met one way or another, but as to being jiattered by it (don't 
 take this for a gratuitous insult ;) you must know that she is 
 never flattered by anything ; poor woman ! it is very difficult to 
 please her, she has in her personality something imperturbable, 
 icy, simple, which makes you ill at ease ; she does without 
 principles still more comfortably than without expansiveness. 
 Naturally virtuous, she immodestly declares she does not 
 know what virtue is, and is unconscious of ever having 
 sacrificed anything to it.'
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 145 
 
 The Muse had a prodigious power of weeping, being a 
 profoundly sensitive creature, after the manner of selfish 
 people. Her tears occasionally elicit valuable words of 
 comfort. 
 
 ' Do not let us bewail anything ; to complain of everything 
 which afflicts or irritates us is to complain of the very constitu- 
 tion of existence. We are made to depict sorrow, are we, and 
 to have nothing else to do with it. Let us be religious ; as for 
 me, every thing disagreeable that happens to me, be it small or 
 great, makes me cling closer to my eternal trouble. I clutch 
 hold of it with both my hands, and I close my eyes calling for 
 grace ; it comes, God has pity on the simple, and the sun 
 always shines for the strong hearts, who place themselves above 
 the mountains. I am taking to a kind of aesthetic mysticism 
 (if the two words can go together) and I could wish it were 
 stronger. When no encouragement comes to you from others, 
 when the external world disgusts you, makes you languid, 
 corrupts you, brutalises you, honourable and fastidious people 
 g.re forced to seek in themselves somewhere for a more decent 
 place to hve in. If Society continues to go on as it is now, we 
 shall again see, I believe, mystics, such as there have been at 
 ^1 dark periods. The soul unable to expand will concentrate 
 herself; the time is not far off when the universal weariness will 
 return, the belief in the end of the world, the expectation of a 
 Messiah. But the theological basis wanting, where will now be 
 the starting point of that enthusiasm, which knows not itself .'' 
 Some will seek it in the flesh, others in the old religions, others 
 in art and humanity, as the Hebrew race in the desert went to 
 worship all manner of idols. We ourselves have come a little 
 too soon, in five and twenty years the point of intersection will 
 be superb in the hands of a master, then prose above all (the 
 younger form) will be able to pay a formidable humanitarian 
 symphony ; books Hke the Satyricon and the Golden Ass may 
 return, possessing in psychological outpourings all that those 
 have in sensual excesses. 
 
 ' Here is what all the socialists in the world have refused to 
 see with their eternal materialist preaching, they have denied 
 pain, they have blasphemed three parts of modem poetry ;
 
 146 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 nothing will eradicate, nothing dry up the blood of Christ, 
 which stirs in us, there is no need to wipe it away, but to make 
 streams for it to flow in. If the sense of human insufficiency, 
 of the nothingness of life were to pass away (and that would be 
 the consequence of the socialist's hypothesis) we should be 
 duller than the birds, who at least perch on the trees. The 
 soul is now sleeping, drunk with words, she has heard, but she 
 will have a frantic awakening when she will give herself over 
 to the joys of freedom, for she will no longer have anything 
 around her to trammel her, neither government, nor religion, 
 nor any formula ; republicans of every shade appear to me the 
 most barbarous pedants in the world, they who dream of 
 organisation by legislations, of a society like a convent. I 
 believe, on the contrary, that rules are on their way off, that 
 the barriers are being overturned, that the earth is levelling. 
 This present great confusion will perhaps herald liberty. Art, 
 which always advances, has at any rate followed this course ; 
 what school of poetry now stands .'' plastic itself becomes 
 increasingly less jDOSsible with the limitations of our language, 
 its preciseness, and our vague, mixed, unseizable ideas ; all 
 that we can do then, is by dint of skill to screw up the strings 
 of our guitar so often thrummed upon, and to be above all 
 virtuosos, since simplicity at our epoch is a chimera. Along 
 with that the picturesque is almost leaving the world, poetry 
 will not however die, but what will be the poetry of the future .'' 
 I do not see it clearly, who knows .^ Beauty will perhaps 
 become a sentiment, useless to humanity, and art will be 
 something holding a middle place between music and algebra. 
 
 ' Since I can not see to-morrow, I should have liked to see 
 yesterday. Why did I not live at any rate under Louis xiv., 
 with a big wig, tightly fitting stockings, and the society of 
 M. Descartes } Why did I not live in the time of Ronsard .> 
 Why did I not live in the time of Nero ? How I would have 
 talked with the Greek rhetoricians ! How I would have 
 travelled in the gi*eat chariots on the Roman roads and slept 
 in the hostelries at night with the vagabond priests of Cybele ! 
 Why did I not live above all in the time of Pericles to sup with 
 Aspasia crowned with violets, and singing verses between white 
 marble walls > Alas ! it is all finished, all that ; that dream will
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 147 
 
 never come back. Now I have lived every^where ; doubtless in 
 some state of pre-existence. I am sure of having been leader 
 of a troop of strolling comedians, under the Roman Empire ; 
 one of those fine fellows, who went to Sicily to buy women to 
 make actresses of them, and who were at once professors, pimps, 
 and artists ; they are fine figures are those same rascals in the 
 comedies of Plautus, and in reading them it all comes back 
 upon me like a reminiscence. Have you ever experienced 
 that — the historic shudder ? 
 
 ' When we compare ourselves with those who surround us, we 
 admire ourselves, but when we lift our eyes higher to the 
 masters, to the absolute, to the dream, how we despise our- 
 selves ! I read one of these days recently, a fine thing ; to wit 
 the life of Careme the cook. I do not know by what connection 
 of ideas, I had come to think of this illustrious inventor of 
 sauces, but I turned out his name in the Universal Biography ; 
 it is magnificent considered as the existence of an artist and 
 enthusiast, it would stir the envy of more than one poet. Here 
 are some of his phrases : when he was told to take care of his 
 health and work less ; " The chai-coal kills us," he said, " but 
 what does it matter } Fewer days, more glory," And, in one 
 of his books in which he admits that he was gluttonous, " but I 
 perceived my vocation so clearly, that I did not stop at eating I" 
 This " stop at eating " is prodigious in a man, whose art it was.' 
 
 Here is another piece of literary criticism flattering to 
 our national pride, and containing a singularly acute obser- 
 vation : — 
 
 ' What distinguishes great geniuses is generalisation and 
 creation ; they resume scattered personalities in a type, and 
 bring new characters to the conscious perception of humanity ; 
 do we not believe in the existence of Don Quixote as in that of 
 Caesar .-* Shakespeare is something tremendous in this respect ; 
 he was not a man but a continent ; there were great men in 
 him, whole crowds, countries. They have no need of attending 
 to style, men like that, they are strong in spite of all their 
 faults and because of them ; but we, the little ones, we are 
 worth nothing except by finish of execution. Hugo, in this 
 century, will knock the bottom out of everybody, although he
 
 148 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 is full of bad things, but what a wind ! What a wind ! I ven- 
 ture here on a proposition, which I would not dare to express 
 anywhere else : it is that the great men often write veiy badly, 
 and so much the better for them. It is not to them that we 
 must go to look for the art of form, but to the second bests, to 
 Horace, to La Bruyere ; one should know the masters by heart, 
 idolise them, try to think like them, — and then separate from 
 them for ever. In the matter of technical instruction there is 
 more profit to be drawn from the learned, the dexterous minds.' 
 
 On another occasion he says of Shakespeare : — 
 
 ' But what a man he was ! How small other poets appear by 
 his side, all without any exception, and above all so trivial. . . 
 It seems to me that if I were to see Shakespeare in person, I 
 should die of fear.' 
 
 The Muse meanwhile was pursuing her avocation. She 
 undertook to write a poem on the Acropolis for a prize 
 competition, and the prophet of 'art for art alone' 
 materially assisted her ; he and Louis Bouilhet revised the 
 manuscript together. The work was submitted to the 
 Academy. It was not always easy to correct the works of 
 the Muse ; her ignorance seems to have been as robustly 
 developed as her ambition. 
 
 Flaubert sent the Muse his private notes on his Eastern 
 travels ; she criticised them chiefly to express surprise that 
 her name did not appear in them, and to reprove Flauberfs 
 want of delicacy. In his reply the following passage 
 occurs : — 
 
 ' Up to the present time people have understood by the 
 East something gleaming, yelling, impassioned, dashing. They 
 have seen nothing in it but dancing women and curved sabres ; 
 fanaticism, voluptuousness ; they remain where Byron left them ; 
 for my part I saw it differently. What I like in the East, on 
 the contrary, is the unconscious greatness, the harmony of things 
 incongruous. I remember a bather who had a silver bracelet
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 149 
 
 on his left arm, and on the other a bhster. That is the true 
 East ; rascals in rags galooned, but covered with vermin. . . . 
 That reminds me of Jaffa, where on entering I smelled at once 
 the odour of orange gardens and corpses ; the cemetery exposed 
 its half-coiTupted skeletons, while the green trees swung their 
 golden fruit over our heads. Do you not see that this poetry 
 is complete, that this is the great synthesis ? All the appetites 
 of the imagination and thought are there satisfied at once ; 
 there is nothing left out here : but people of taste, the people 
 of pretty touches, of purification, of illusions, those, who with 
 manuals of anatomy for ladies, science within the grasp of all, 
 pretty sentiments, and honeyed art, change, erase, remove, and 
 call themselves classic, the wretches. Ah, how I would like to 
 be a learned man ! What a beautiful book I would write entitled 
 Of the Interpretation of Antiquity ; for I am sure I am in the true 
 tradition ; what I put into it is the modem sentiment.' 
 
 The nature of the disillusionment which Flaubert was to 
 suffer in the matter of the Muse is clearly indicated in the 
 following : — 
 
 'You are not a woman, and if I have loved you more and 
 more deeply (try to understand this word "deeply") than any 
 other, it is because you seemed to me less a woman than any 
 other ; none of our differences have ever arisen except from the 
 feminine side of you. Think over this — you will see if I am 
 mistaken. I would wish that we should keep our two bodies, 
 and be only one same mind ; understand that this is not love, 
 but something higher, it seems to me, since this longing of the 
 soul is almost a need that the soul has to live, to expand, to be 
 greater. Every sentiment is an extension. For this reason 
 liberty is the noblest of passions.' 
 
 Here is another reference to his malady : — 
 
 ' No, I regret none of my youth. I was horribly wearied. I 
 dreamed of suicide, I consumed myself in all possible kinds of 
 melancholy ; my nervous malady did me good, it diverted all 
 that to the physical element, and left my head cooler, and then 
 it introduced me to curious psychological phenomena, of which
 
 150 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 no one has any idea, or rather which no one has felt. I will 
 take niy revenge some day, I will utilise them in a book (that 
 metaphj^sical romance with appai'itions of which I spoke to 
 you), but as it is a subject which frightens me, speaking from 
 the point of view of health, I must wait, and I must be far 
 from these impressions to be able to give them to myself 
 artificially, ideally, and so without danger to myself or my 
 work.' 
 
 As a specimen of the Muse"'s poetical powers the following 
 line, literally translated from the Paysanne^ is illustrative : — 
 
 ' And each year he had a baby.' 
 
 ' Et chaque annee il avait un enfant.' 
 
 It is necessary to quote the French in order to show that 
 no injustice is being done to the good lady. Even the 
 enamoured Flaubert Avas startled by this. 
 
 With the imaginary conversations of the dotards in 
 Egypt, the following may be compared : Flaubert had been 
 at a funeral : — 
 
 'While I was looking at poor Pouchet, who was writhing as 
 he stood like a reed before the wind, do you know what I had 
 beside me .'' A gentleman, who questioned me on my travels : 
 " Are there museums in Egypt } What is the state of the 
 public libraries.-*" (this is literal) and as I dispersed his 
 illusions, he was miserable. " Is it possible .'' What a wretched 
 country ! How is civilisation to . . . etc. etc' The interment 
 being Protestant the priest spoke in French at the edge of the 
 grave ; my friend was better pleased with that : " and then 
 Catholicism is robbed of these flowers of rhetoric." O men, O 
 mortals, and to say that one is always deceived, that one is wrong 
 to believe in one's power of inventing, that the reality always is 
 too big for you. I went to this ceremony with the intention 
 of stiffening my mind a bit in the art of delicate touches, of 
 trying to discover a few pebbles, and here are whole blocks 
 falling on my head ! The grotesque drummed at my ears and 
 the pathetic was in convulsions before my eyes. From whence 
 I draw, or rather re-draw, this conclusion : you should never
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 151 
 
 fear being exaggerated. All the great men have been so, 
 Michael Angelo, Rabelais, Shakespeare, Moliere.' 
 
 Flaubert for the sake of a friend could put up with a bore 
 in spite of his irritable nerves : — 
 
 ' Yesterday the 6th, and to-day the 7th of July 1853 will be 
 celebrated in the annals of my existence as boredom. Two days 
 of Azvedo ! Two afternoons. Two dinners. What a reptile ! 
 and the best of it is, this dear fellow adores me ; he embraced 
 me this evening on leaving ! He came yesterday at eleven 
 o'clock, and I made him go by the boat at seven; not knowing how 
 to spend the time, I proposed to him a walk in the forest ; it was 
 splendid weather, his aspect was mitigated by that of the forest; 
 and in fact, I was not too bored ! but it is when one is with him 
 alone, and looks at him ! To-day at four o'clock he came back 
 with Bouilhet, whom he won't leave, and who is made ill by him. 
 What a strange thing ! for at the bottom the poor fellow is not 
 a fool, he has sometimes a glimmer of genius through his great 
 rants, and he possesses one very rare quality — to wit, enthusiasm 
 (a quality, however, which has more to do with his blood, his 
 Spanish descent, than his individual mind) but he is so common, 
 so repulsive, nervously speaking, that if he had rendered you 
 all the services in the world, you could not love him. Then, in 
 what does being agreeable consist .'' What is this evil, subtle 
 miasma, that emanates from an individual, and makes him 
 unpleasant to you, even when he is not so. What is the reason 
 of that ? I am worrying myself to find out. And then what a 
 dress ! What clothes ! Threadbare black all over ; low shoes, 
 grey stockings, a coloured shirt, its colour disappearing under 
 complicated patterns ; a hangman's beard ! that is strong, the 
 beard is a whole universe ! remember this great doctrine which 
 I have this moment discovered. Oh heaven, heaven, have we 
 not enough moral dirt without physical dirt ? How these 
 creatures make one love beauty ! Yes, a beautiful face is a 
 fine thing, a beautiful stuff, beautiful marble is fine, the flash 
 of gold, the lustre of satin, a green bough swinging in the wind, 
 a great ox ruminating in the grass, a flying bird, all are fine ; it 
 is only man who is ugly. How sad that all is ! He makes my 
 brain turn ! and to say that if I were blind, I should perhaps
 
 152 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 like him better, I believe that these repulsions are intimations 
 from Providence, it is an instinct of self preservation, which 
 warns us to be on our guard, and I am killing myself in the 
 effort to find out in Avhat way Azvedo may injure me.' 
 
 Upon this, the Muse took up her parable in the high 
 moral line and lectured her admirer, with the following 
 result : — 
 
 ' Still savage, still fierce, still undaunted, and passionate, 
 what a strange Muse it is ! And how unjust in its tempers ! 
 I put that all down to the score of lyricism, but I assure you 
 that it has a very narrow side, and even bruises sometimes, dear 
 good Muse ! Because that idiot of an Azvedo bored me two 
 days you send me a kind of vague fulmination against him, 
 against myself, against eveiything. But I assure you that I 
 am quite innocent of all that ; and, in the first place I did not 
 invite him, it is he, who of his own accord, came back the 
 second day ; unless one took him by the shoulders, it was 
 impossible to get him outside the door. He came back with 
 Bouilhet, and he wanted nothing more than to come for 
 comfort. As for him, Bouilhet, after what Azvedo had done, 
 or said he had done, for Melaenis, he could not send him off 
 brutally either ; at last in the evening I breathe out my bore- 
 dom in ten lines to be rid of it, think no more of it, then I 
 spoke to you of a heap of other things better and higher (of 
 which you do not say one word) and you send me back in answer 
 a kind of denunciation in four pages, as if I adored this 
 gentleman, made much of him, etc., and abandoned you for him : 
 you will admit that it is funny, good Muse, and this is the 
 second time that it has happened ! What a child you are ! ' 
 
 The fact was — a fact that Flaubert did not see — that the 
 Muse was profoundly jealous of Louis Bouilhet ; in La 
 Servante she openly accuses him of })romoting the breach 
 between her and Flaubert. For which, if he were respon- 
 sible, he would deserve our best thanks. Azvedo was a 
 symptom of Bouilhet^s influence over Flaubert ; that was 
 enough.
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 153 
 
 In the following passage Flaubert, perhaps unconsciously, 
 describes his own life : — 
 
 ' Yes — I maintain (and this should be for me a practical 
 dogma in the artist's life) one must take one's existence in two 
 parts : live like a middle-class man and think like a demi-god. 
 
 ' If you wish to seek happiness and the beautiful at the same 
 time, you will not reach either ; for the second only comes by 
 sacrifice ; Art, like the God of the Jews, delights in burnt 
 offerings. 
 
 ' Let us then look for tranquillity only, let us ask life only for 
 an arm-chair, not for thrones ; for sufficient, not for intoxication. 
 Passion accommodates itself ill to that long patience, which the 
 craft demands. Art is vast enough to occupy the whole of a 
 man ; to divert anything fx-om it is almost a crime, it is a theft 
 from the idea, a failure of duty.' 
 
 Again the Muse wishes to establish closer relations : — 
 
 'What a strange creature you are, my dear friend, to send 
 me diatribes again, as my chemist would say. You ask me for a 
 thing, I say yes, I promise it you again, and you scold again. 
 Well — since you hide nothing from me (and I approve of this) 
 I do not conceal from you, that this seems to me a fixed idea 
 with you ; you wish to establish between affections of a different 
 nature a connection of which I neither see the sense nor the 
 utility. I do not see at all, in what way the civilities, which 
 you do me at Paris, engage my mother in anything. I was for 
 three yeai-s a visitor at the Schlesingers, where she never set 
 her feet. In the same way Bouilhet has been coming here for 
 eight years to sleep, dine, and lunch eveiy Sunday without his 
 mother having been even once revealed to us, though she 
 comes to Rouen nearly every month ; and I assure you, that my 
 mother is not in the least shocked by it. Lastly, it shall be 
 done as you desire. I promise, I swear to you, that I Avill place 
 your I'easons before her, and that I will beg her to bring it 
 about that you see one another. As for the rest ; with the best 
 intentions in the world, I can do nothing ; perhaps you will 
 suit one another, perhaps you will dislike one another 
 enormously. The good woman is not particularly adhesive,
 
 154 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 and she has given up seeing not only all her old acquaintances, 
 but even her friends. 
 
 ' There is something wrong in my personality, and my 
 vocation. I was born a lyric, and I do not write verses. I 
 would like to overwhelm those I love with kindness, and I 
 make them weep. Now Bouilhet ! — there is a man ! What 
 a complete nature ! If I were capable of being jealous of 
 anyone, I should be of him ; with the depressing life that he 
 has led, and the slops that he has swallowed, I should certainly 
 be an idiot by now, or at the galleys, or hung by my own hands. 
 Sufferings from outside have made him better, that is the way 
 with the tall forests, they grow in the wind and the dust, 
 through flint and granite, while the garden fruit trees with all 
 their manure and straw coverings die in a row against a wall, 
 and in the face of the sun. Indeed I love him well, that is all 
 that I can say about it, and never mistrust him. 
 
 ' Do you know what I was talking about to my mother all 
 yesterday evening ? About you. I told her many things, that 
 she did not know, or at least that she only half guessed ; she 
 appreciates you, and I am sure that this winter she will see you 
 with pleasure. So that question is settled.' 
 
 The Muse was not, however, pacified ; and in the midst of 
 criticisms on her poems, suggestions for their improvement, 
 praise of isolated lines, we have such passages as the 
 following : — 
 
 ' Finally, poor dear friend, do you wish me to disclose to you 
 the bottom of my thoughts ? or rather to open to you the 
 bottom of your heart .'' I think that your love is on the decline. 
 The dissatisfaction, the suffering, that I cause you, has no other 
 origin, for such as I am, such I have always been. But now, 
 you see me better, and you judge me reasonably perhaps. I 
 know nothing of it ; but still when one loves completely, one 
 loves what one loves, as it is, with its faults, and its monstro- 
 sities, one even adores its mange, dotes on its hump, breathes 
 with rapture its poisonous breath. It is the same way with 
 moral deformities ; now I am deformed, low, selfish, etc. Do 
 you know that will all end in making me unsupportably proud ? 
 Always blaming me as j)eople do. I do not believe there is a
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 155 
 
 mortal on the earth, who is less approved of than I, but I will 
 not change. I will not reform. 
 
 ' What makes you think that I did not care very much about 
 the upshot of the philosopher's visit ? Because I could not 
 come to you on Wednesday evening, harassed as I was with 
 business, and running about. Ah ! know you that I have never 
 told you a quarter of the things that you write to me, I who am 
 so hard, as you say, and have not the shadow of an affection for 
 you. That completely breaks you down, you say ; and me too, 
 and more than I say or will ever say. But when one writes such 
 things, one of two things is true ; either one thinks them, or 
 one does not think them ; if one does not think them, it is 
 abominable, and if one only expresses one's real conviction in 
 words, would it not be better simply to shut one's door to people.' 
 
 And so forth. In fact, Flaubert's patience gave way at 
 last. This quarrel was made up ; so was another ; but the 
 Muse had only one string to her harp, and as she played 
 on it very often, Flaubert saw that there was no alternative 
 except to break with her altogether, or marry her. The 
 latter M^as impossible if he were to continue to live, as he 
 had always lived, putting art in the first place in his life. 
 The woman who was always writing, crying for more 
 affection, more frequent visits, would insist on entering his 
 study, disturbing his whole life. Knowing his own nervous 
 temperament, he knew that he would make the Muse a 
 miserable wife, and, through his own impatience of suffering 
 in others, himself a miserable husband. He chose wisely. 
 
 Possibly the connection began with an insufficient 
 appreciation of what it might lead to; when it became 
 clear that the Muse wished to make it permanent, Flaubert 
 did his honest best to educate her up to the level of being a 
 literary companion ; he failed completely. From April 1854 
 Louis Bouilhet took her place as chief correspondent, so long 
 as the friends lived apart. Perhaps she was right to be 
 jealous after all.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 MADAME BOVARY 
 
 When Flaubert was sitting in the study at Croisset in the 
 summer of 1846 with Louis Bouilhet and Maxime Ducamp, 
 and the question of their literary future arose, he would 
 say : ' We must begin with a thunderclap."* He did. In 
 1856 Madame Bovary was published in the Revue de Paris ; 
 the first number appeared on October 1st. On the 24th 
 of January following the author ' honoured with his pre- 
 sence "* the dock of the sixth chamber of the criminal adminis- 
 tration. He was charged with an outrage on morality and 
 religion. The prosecution was really directed against the 
 Revue de Paris, which had taken a line hostile to the Govern- 
 ment, and had already been twice warned. Flaubert was 
 acquitted ; but the verdict was modified by reservations of an 
 uncomplimentary character. The prosecution was attended 
 by the usual consequences ; it drew attention to the book, 
 which had a very large sale, and its author at once took rank 
 with the first literary men in France. 
 
 While in one sense Flaubert profited by the action brought 
 against him, in another he suffered a serious injury. Towards 
 the end of his life he resented being spoken of as the author 
 of Madame Bovary, and often expressed a wish to buy up 
 all the remaining copies, and suppress the publication. He 
 felt that his work had been misunderstood, and saw that 
 
 15C
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 157 
 
 there was some reason for the misunderstanding ; to this mis- 
 understanding the prosecution had contributed by drawing 
 attention exclusively to one half of the book, and ignoring 
 the other half. 
 
 We have seen that after the friends had condemned the 
 first St. Antlwny to the fire, they had recommended Flaubert 
 to find a subject which would leave no room for the develop- 
 ment of his exaggerated lyrical tendency, and they had 
 suggested the story of Delaunay. The details of this story, 
 according to Maxime Ducamp, were as follows. Delaunay, 
 a country-bred youth of no ability, had been at school at 
 Rouen with Flaubert and Bouilhet ; he took up the study 
 of medicine, became a pupil of the Pere Flaubert, passed 
 examinations which qualified him to practise on the lowest 
 grade in the French medical profession, as an ' officer of 
 health,' and settled in a village in the neighbourhood. He 
 first married an elderly woman, who was supposed to have 
 money ; and, on her death, a young woman of no particular 
 beauty but some pretensions to education. She was a little 
 yellow-haired person, with a poor complexion, and a dumpy 
 figure, but an extremely seductive voice and manner. She 
 seemed to be perpetually imploring compassion. She 
 despised her husband, found other admirers, entered on a 
 reckless course of extravagance, was beaten by her lovers, 
 ruined Delaunay, and poisoned herself just at the moment 
 when it seemed that he must become aware of all her 
 iniquities : he had remained blind throughout. Even her 
 death and the subsequent discoveries did not destroy his 
 love for her ; he sank into a deep melancholy, and, within a 
 year's time, took a fatal dose of prussic acid also. Such was 
 the story of Delaunay. We can imagine Rudyard Kipling 
 or Guy de Maupassant rattling it off for us in a dozen pages, 
 finishing up the apparently commonplace narrative with a
 
 158 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 surprise and a shudder. It is not the kind of story on 
 which we would expect a masterpiece of fiction to be based ; 
 one of those books which can only be achieved by a giant. 
 
 In one of Flauberfs letters, he remarks that the classics 
 and the Middle Ages gave us the cuckold, who was a comic 
 character; modern romance gives us adultery, which is a 
 serious business ; we must not then be surprised to find that 
 in his hands the story of Delaunay is a very grave matter. 
 
 We are introduced to the hero — for if the book has a 
 hero, it is poor Bovary — on his first arrival at school, an 
 overgrown, gawky, neglected lad, who had to take a place 
 among boys smaller than himself. The usual awkwardness 
 of a new boy was considerably aggravated by the fact that 
 he possessed a new cap. ' It was one of those head-pieces of 
 the composite order, in which are to be discovered the 
 elements of the bear-skin, the Lancer''s chapska, the wide-a- 
 wake, the otter-skin, and the cotton night-cap ; one of those 
 poor things, in a word, whose dumb ugliness has depths of 
 expression like the face of an idiot. Egg-like and puffed 
 out with whalebone, it began with three circular sausages, 
 then, separated by a red band, came alternate lozenges of 
 velvet and rabbit-skin ; after that a kind of bag, which 
 ended in a cardboard polygon covered with embroidery in 
 elaborate needlework, from which hung at the end of a 
 long thin cord a little cross-bar in gold thread by way of 
 tassel ; it was new ; the peak was shiny."" 
 
 After this, a description of the mother of Bovary is super- 
 fluous ; such a cap indicates maternal affection in large 
 quantities, free from the control of tact and taste. We are 
 not surprised to learn that the new boy is an only son — his 
 father was a worthless, retired army-surgeon, who had used 
 his dashing appearance to secure as his wife a middle-aged, 
 middle-class woman with money. The lady, rudely wakened
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 159 
 
 from her dreams of love, took the management of her affairs 
 into her own hands, and concentrated all her affections upon 
 her boy, Avhom she did her best to spoil, and sent to school 
 too late. 
 
 In spite of the unpromising commencement of his school 
 career, young Bovary escaped the extremity of horrors which 
 might be expected to attend on so unprepossessing a youth ; 
 owing to a certain unobtrusive strength and simplicity, 
 which disarmed his schoolfellows, and an aimless dogged 
 industry, which won the respect of his teachers. As he had 
 been sent to school too late, so he was withdrawn too early, 
 and consigned to solitary lodgings, provisioned from home, 
 in which he pursued the study of medicine. When the time 
 came he failed to pass his examination ; the time which should 
 have been given to study had been devoted to dominoes ; 
 his very vices were profoundly meaningless and contemptible. 
 On a second attempt, having learned the answers to a large 
 number of questions by heart under the direction of a 
 skilled coach, Bovary was more fortunate. Then came the 
 question of placing him. His mother found a suitable 
 practice at the small town of Tostes, near Rouen, and a 
 suitable wife in the person of a middle-aged widow of 
 Dieppe, reputed to be provided with means, and to whose 
 hand there were several aspirants. 'To attain her ends 
 Mme. Bovary was obliged to eject them all, and she even 
 showed remarkable skill in counteracting the wiles of a pork- 
 butcher, who was supported by the priests."' The marriage 
 did not bring Bovary much satisfaction. ' His wife was the 
 master ; he had to say this, not to say that, before people ; 
 to fast on Fridays, dress as she thought good, dun the 
 patients who did not pay up, according to her orders.' ' In 
 the evenings, when Charles came back, she put her long thin 
 arms out from under the sheets, passed them around his
 
 160 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 neck, and having made him sit on the edge of the bed, 
 began to tell him her troubles : he forgot her, he loved 
 another ! People had been quite right to tell her that she 
 would be unhappy. And she would finish up by asking him 
 for some syrup for her cough and a little more love.** Nor 
 was the good lady without some reason for her jealousy. A 
 well-to-do farmer in the neighbourhood, a widower living 
 with an only daughter, chanced to break his leg ; Bovary 
 was called in and successfully reduced the fracture — a very 
 simple one. The father was astounded at the skill of his 
 medical man, the daughter no less so : his visits became 
 vranecessarily frequent. At this juncture it was suddenly 
 discovered that the widow of Dieppe had exaggerated the 
 amount of her property ; a terrific scene ensued between her 
 and Bo vary ""s mother. ' Eight days afterwards, as she was 
 hanging out linen in her courtyard, she was taken with a 
 spitting of blood, and the following day, while Charles had 
 his back turned to draw the window curtains, she said : " Oh, 
 my God ! "" uttered a sigh, and fainted. She was dead. 
 What an amazing thing ! "* ' When all was ended at the 
 cemetery, Charles went home. He found nobody down- 
 stairs ; he went up to the first floor, in their room he saw 
 her dress still hanging at the foot of the bed ; then leaning 
 against the bureau, he remained till evening lost in a dream 
 of sorrow. After all, she had loved him."* 
 
 The Pere Rouault, grateful for the restoration of his 
 health, took pains to comfort the young widower ; he had 
 himself passed through misfortune, and Charles became 
 a frequent visitor at Les Bertaux. The inevitable duly 
 followed. Charles married Mile. Rouault. The young lady 
 was distinguished by an elegance not to be expected in the 
 daughter of a country farmer : she had been brought up in 
 a convent at Rouen in a manner rather above her station.
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 161 
 
 When her father first took her to school, they had dined in 
 a restaurant where the plates were ornamented with edifying 
 scenes from the life of Mademoiselle de la Valliere and 
 Louis XIV. The routine of the convent at first charmed 
 her. ' When she went to confession she invented little sins 
 in order to stay longer on her knees in the dusk, with her 
 hands joined, her face close to the grating and the whispering 
 priest.' ' Instead of following the mass she used to look at 
 the sacred pictures in her book with their azure borders, 
 and she loved the sick lamb, the heart pierced with pointed 
 arrows, or Jesus falling under the cross as He walks. She 
 tried by way of mortification to remain a whole day without 
 eating. She racked her brains for some vow to accomplish."* 
 But the convent introduced her also to other than religious 
 emotions. Every month an old maid used to come and 
 spend a week there, overhauling and repairing the linen ; 
 she was the daughter of a noble family ruined by the 
 Revolution, and was protected by the Archbishop, owing 
 to the devotion of her noble ancestors to the Church. She 
 not only knew all the current gossip, and was a mine of 
 songs and tales of old-world gallantries, but she also 
 smuggled romances in the pocket of her apron. 'There 
 was nothing but love, lovers, ladies, persecuted maidens 
 swooning in lonely pavilions, postilions killed at every 
 relay, horses falling dead on every page, sombre forests, 
 agitations of the heart, oaths, sobs, tears, and kisses, boats 
 and moonlights, nightingales in thickets, gentlemen brave 
 as lions, gentle as lambs, virtuous as nobody ever was, 
 always well dressed, and weeping like the urns on tomb- 
 stones.'' Her school-fellows used to bring copies of the 
 Keepsake back after the holidays, ' full of portraits of lovely 
 ladies in luxurious surroundings, of landscapes in which 
 palms, pines, fir-trees, lions, tigers, minarets, Roman ruins, 
 
 L
 
 162 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 crouching camels were framed in a well-kept virgin forest, 
 through which was seen a moonlit lake, with floating swans."* 
 The very songs which she learned helped to intensify the 
 romantic unrealities of the world of her imagination. 
 ' When her mother died, she wept abundantly for the first 
 few days. She had a funeral card made for her with the 
 hair of the defunct, and, in a letter which she sent to Les 
 Bertaux, full of melancholy reflections on life, she begged 
 to be buried hereafter in the same tomb. Her worthy 
 father thought she was ill, and came to see her. Emma 
 was inwardly delighted to feel herself suddenly arrived at 
 that rare ideal of pallid existence which mediocre hearts 
 never reach.' In due time her grief evaporated, and then 
 she began to disappoint the nuns, who had hoped to retain 
 her, 'This mind positive in the midst of its enthusiasms, 
 which had loved the Church for its flowers, music for the 
 words of songs, literature for its excitement of the emotions, 
 rose in rebellion before the mysteries of faith, and in the 
 same way was still more irritated by the conventual 
 discipline, a thing antipathetic to her constitution."' She 
 was removed from the convent, and went to keep house for 
 her father ; pleased at first with the responsibility and the 
 management of servants, she soon began to feel herself 
 buried in the country, and regretted her convent. 
 
 Charles Bovary had appeared to her as a man of science, 
 a being quite superior to the coarse rustics, whose awkward 
 addresses were the only possible interruption to the 
 monotony of her life at the farm. She saw in him a 
 deliverer. 
 
 The marriage was celebrated with a prodigious feasting, 
 a riot of the material side of life, violently contrasting with 
 the moonlights of Emma"'s romantic imagining. The honey- 
 moon soon waned, had been wanting in flavour; there had
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 163 
 
 been no travelling in those operatic landscapes of which her 
 mind was full ; perhaps this was the cause of the failure. 
 'It seemed to her that certain spots on the earth must 
 produce happiness, like a plant peculiar to one soil, and 
 which grows badly anywhere else. Why could she not 
 lean on the balcony of a Swiss chalet, or harbour her 
 melancholy in a Scotch bothie, with a husband clothed in 
 a black velvet coat with long skirts, wearing soft boots, a 
 pointed hat, and lace cuffs ?' 
 
 Charles, on the contrary, was enraptured ; each of Emma''s 
 little domestic refinements surprised him more than the last ; 
 she even talked of finger-glasses for dessert. He was never 
 weary of watching her draw, hearing her play the piano, 
 'the quicker her fingers ran over the keys, the more 
 astounded he was."" Meanwhile his conversation was not 
 equally interesting to his wife ; ' when at Rouen he had 
 never cared to go to the theatre to see the actors from 
 Paris ; he could neither swim, nor fence, nor use a pistol ; 
 and then his boots were appalling in shape and size. She 
 recited impassioned verses to him in the garden by moon- 
 light, sang melancholy slow music ; found herself afterwards 
 as calm as before those experiments, and Charles no more 
 amorous than usual ; before long she began to ask herself 
 why she had ever married,' 
 
 These mournful reveries were interrupted by an event. 
 The Marquis de Vaubyessard, a local magnate contemplating 
 political life, determined to give a ball. Charles had 
 attended him for some small ailment successfully; he had 
 called, seen Madame Bovary, found that her manners were 
 good ; she and Bovary were invited to the ball, and to spend 
 the night at Vaubyessard. 
 
 The stateliness of the house, its historic pictures, an aged 
 duke reputed to have been the lover of Marie Antoinette,
 
 164 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 inclined Madame Bovary to believe that here was her world of 
 romance realised ; she discovered herself to be better-looking 
 than many of the ladies, at least as well-mannered. Nor 
 was there wanting a suggestion of moral corruption ; she 
 saw a lady skilfully pass a little note to a gentleman, she 
 waltzed with a Vicomte, became giddy, found herself leaning 
 in his arms. The next day on the way home, while stopping 
 to re-arrange the harness, Charles picked up an embroidered 
 cigar-case. The Vicomte had shortly before passed them on 
 horseback ; doubtless the case was his, it was adorned with 
 a coronet. Emma annexed and kept this cigar-case. 
 
 After this Madame Bovary gave way to a deeper melan- 
 choly ; she spent her time reading the works of Eugene Sue, 
 of Balzac, of Georges Sand. Paris floated before her mind ; 
 she even bought a map of the town, and amused herself 
 with making imaginary expeditions. She added to the 
 small elegancies of her establishment, 'bought a blotting- 
 book, stationery case, pen-tray, envelopes, although she 
 had no one to write to ; she wished to travel, or return to 
 the convent ; she longed at one and the same time to die, 
 and to live at Paris.'' 
 
 After a while she began to neglect everything, sank into 
 an aimless sadness, became irritable : ' some days she 
 chattered with a feverish exaltation ; this state of excite- 
 ment was all of a sudden succeeded by a long torpor, and she 
 remained without speaking or moving. She was then brought 
 round by sprinkling a bottle of eau-de-Cologne on her arms.** 
 
 She continually complained of Tostes, and Charles there- 
 fore imagined that the place was unsuitable to her health ; 
 he looked out for another practice, and found it in a large 
 village or small town called Yonville-FAbbaye. In making 
 preparations for her departure Emma came across her 
 wedding bouquet. She burned it.
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 165 
 
 English travellers who know the appearance of the country 
 round Amiens need no description of the melancholy land- 
 scape which surrounds Yonville-FAbbaye ; the character of 
 the sluggish Somme extends to its tributaries and the 
 adjacent streams. For a picture of the place itself we need 
 not go far from home ; Thame, Stony Stratford, Olney, 
 Calne, Devizes, Leominster, and hundreds of other English 
 comitry towns, are neither more nor less than Yonville. 
 The place was duly provided with a church, a priest, a 
 smithy, market-house, mayor, hotel, restaurant, lawyer, but 
 its chief glory was its chemist and druggist : ' what attracts 
 the eye most is the shop of M. Homais, opposite the Golden 
 Lion. Above all, when its large lamp is lit in the evening, 
 and the green and red bottles that embellish its front 
 throw their twin illuminations far away on the ground, like 
 Bengal lights, and the shadow of the druggist leaning on 
 his desk is seen between them. His house from top to 
 bottom is placarded with inscriptions written in English 
 hand, romid-hand, in large type : " Vichy Water, Seltzer 
 Water, Bareges Water, Cleansing Rubbers, RaspaiPs Medi- 
 cines, Ai'abian Racahout, Darcefs Pastilles, Regnaulfs 
 Electuary, Bandages, Baths, Medicated Chocolate,'" etc., 
 and the sign, which occupies the whole width of the shop, 
 bears in letters of gold : " Homais, Pharmacist." Then at 
 the back of the shop, behind the great scales riveted to the 
 counter, the word "Laboratory"" is revealed above a glass 
 door, which once more repeats half-way up " Homais "" in 
 gilt letters on a black ground.'' 
 
 Yonville is twenty-four miles from Rouen, and every day 
 an omnibus used to run backwards and forwards from the 
 Golden Lion, of which the widow Lefran^ois was proprie- 
 tress. On the evening on which the Bovary family were to 
 arrive M. Homais awaited them at the inn : ' a man in
 
 166 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 green leather slippers, somewhat marked with small-pox, 
 wearing a green velvet cap with a gold tassel, was warming 
 his back at the fire. His face expressed nothing but self- 
 complacency.' 
 
 The company assembled at the Golden Lion included 
 Binet, the collector of taxes, an ex-carbineer, a very 
 methodical personage, who spent most of his time at a 
 turning-lathe, and M. Leon Dupuis, a young man lodging 
 with Honiais, and articled clerk to M. Guillaumin, the 
 lawyer. These persons dined there regularly. On the 
 arrival of the Hirondelle with the Bovarys, dinner was at 
 once served ; young Duj)uis and Homais joined the party 
 of the new-comers ; Homais asking permission to wear his 
 cap, for fear of neuralgia. He proceeded forthwith to 
 introduce Bovary to his new practice : ' for the rest the 
 prosecution of Medicine is not very troublesome in our 
 country ; for the state of the roads permits the use of the 
 carriage, and, generally speaking, the people pay satis- 
 factorily, the agriculturists being well off. In the strictly 
 medical connection, apart from the ordinary cases of 
 enteritis, bronchitis, biliary affections, etc., we have from 
 time to time intermittent fevers at the period of harvest, 
 but in general few grave illnesses, nothing specially to be 
 noticed, if it is not a large number of cold humours, which 
 are doubtless due to the deplorable hygienic conditions of 
 the dwellings of our peasantry. Ah ! you will find many 
 prejudices to contend against, M. Bovary, much obstinate 
 adherence to routine, against which all the efforts of your 
 science will daily have to stumble ; for recourse is still had 
 to prayers, relics, the clergyman, rather than come naturally 
 to the physician or the druggist. The climate however is 
 not, so to say, bad, and we even reckon in our community 
 some nonagenarians. The thermometer (I have myself
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 167 
 
 taken observations) goes down in winter to seven degrees 
 Fahrenheit, and in the hot season reaches twenty-five to 
 thirty degrees Centigrade at the most, which gives us 
 twenty-four degrees Reaumur as a maximum, otherwise 
 fifty-four Fahrenheit (Enghsh reckoning), not more ! — (note, 
 30 Centigrade is really 85 Fahrenheit — Homais uses his 
 figures at random) — and, in fact, we are sheltered from the 
 north winds by the forest of Argueil on one side, from the 
 west winds on the other by the hillside of Saint-Jean ; and 
 yet this heat, which is caused by the watery vapour given 
 off by the river, and the presence of considerable numbers 
 of cattle in our meadows who exhale, as you know, much 
 ammonia, that is to say, azote, hydrogen and oxygen (no, 
 azote and hydrogen only), and which, drawing to itself the 
 "humus" of the earth, confounding all these different 
 emanations, uniting them in one bundle, so to speak, and 
 combining of itself with the electricity spread in the 
 atmosphere, where there is any, might in the long-run, as 
 in tropical countries, engender insalubrious miasmas. This 
 heat, I say, is tempered precisely on the side from which it 
 comes, or rather from which it would come, that is to say 
 on the south side, by the south-east winds, which, being 
 cooled of themselves by passing over the Seine, reach us 
 sometimes all of a sudden like blasts from Russia.' 
 
 Meanwhile M. Leon Dupuis and Madame Bovary have 
 discovered that they have the same taste in sunsets, in 
 books, the same discontent with the things that immediately 
 surround them. 'It is so pleasant,"* observed the clerk, 
 ' among the disillusionments of life to be able to repose 
 upon the ideal of noble characters, of pure affections, and of 
 pictures of happiness. As for me, living here out of the 
 world, it is my only distraction, but Yonville offers so few 
 resources V
 
 168 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' Like Tostes, doubtless,*' replied Emma, ' and so I always 
 subscribed to a lending library/ 
 
 ' If Madame Bovary will do me the honour to make use of 
 it,' said the druggist, who had just heard the last words, *I 
 have myself a library at her disposal composed of the best 
 authors, Voltaire, Rousseau, Delille, Walter Scott, the 
 Echoes of the Magazines, etc., and I am further in receipt 
 of several periodicals, among them the Rouen Beacon daily, 
 having the advantage of being its correspondent for the 
 centres of Buchy, Forges, Neufchatel, Yonville, and the 
 neighbourhood."' In course of time the new arrivals with- 
 drew from the fascinations of the Golden Lion and Homais 
 to their own house, where, although they found everything 
 in confusion, Emma hoped to enjoy a better future. It 
 could not be worse than the past. 
 
 Things, however, did not go particularly well at first with 
 either member of the Bovary household at Yonville. Clients 
 were some time in appearing, and the interested friendship 
 of M. Homais failed to compensate for their absence. 
 Though M. Homais was the victim of an irresistible impulse 
 to concern himself with other peoplc''s affairs in general, he 
 had a particular reason for being friendly to Bovary ; he 
 had infringed the law which forbids unlicensed persons to 
 exercise medical functions, and had been comminated by 
 the Procm-eur du Roi at Rouen. 
 
 Meanwhile Madame Bovary became a mother ; she had 
 wished for a son, who should be strong and swarthy, and 
 called George, but fate determined that her first-born 
 should be a daughter. She consoled herself for the dis- 
 appointment by seeking for a sufficiently romantic name for 
 the infant, such as Amanda, Galsuinda, Yseult, or Leocadia. 
 'M. Homais, for his part, had a predilection for all those 
 names which recalled a sreat man, an illustrious action, or
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 169 
 
 a noble thought, and it was in obedience to this system that 
 he had baptized his own four children ; thus, Napoleon 
 represented Glory, Franklin Liberty, Irene was perhaps 
 a concession to romanticism, but Athaliah was certainly a 
 homage to the most immortal masterpiece of the French 
 stage.' Eventually, the child was called Bertha, Madame 
 Bovary having heard this name addressed by the Marchioness 
 to a young lady at Vaubyessard. 
 
 The child was put out to nurse, after the French fashion ; 
 the foster-mother. Mere Rolet, a labourer's wife, lived in the 
 outskirts of Yonville, and Madame Bovary, on her convales- 
 cence, paid a visit to her child. She happened to encounter 
 M. Leon Dupuis on her way, whose escort she accepted. From 
 this time Madame Bovary became the divinity of M. Leon's 
 dreams ; she had also awakened sentiments of tender adora- 
 tion in the breast of Justin, a youth distantly related to M. 
 Homais, who fulfilled many and various functions in the 
 establishment of that luminary of science. 
 
 Homais' benevolent attentions to the house of Bovary 
 continued ; he would come in during dinner, and seat himself 
 at the side of the table. ' He used to ask the doctor for 
 news of his patients, and the latter would consult him as 
 to the probabilities of payment. Then they would talk of 
 " what there was in the paper." Homais, by this hour of 
 the day, knew it almost by heart, and he repeated it, word 
 for word, with the leaders of the journalists, and all the 
 stories of disasters that had happened in France or abroad. 
 But, the subject running dry, he did not refrain from giving 
 vent to some observations on the dishes that he saw. Some- 
 times even, half-rising, he would delicately point out to 
 Madame Bovary the tenderest morsel, or, turning to the 
 maid, addressed advice to her on the manipulation of 
 hashes and the hygiene of seasonings ; he talked aromas,
 
 170 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 osmazone, juices, and gelatine in a way to make one giddy. 
 His head, moreover, being more full of recipes than his shop 
 was of bottles, Homais excelled in making quantities of 
 preserves, vinegars, and sweet liqueurs ; he knew, too, all the 
 last inventions in economical stoves, with the art of keeping 
 cheeses and doctoring sick wines."* 
 
 On Sunday evenings Madame Homais was 'at home.' 
 The Bovarys attended regularly. Leon also ; there were 
 seldom other guests. After a round game, Charles and 
 Homais would play at dominoes, while Leon read poetry to 
 Emma. Thus there gradually grew up confidential relations 
 between the young clerk and the doctor''s wife ; she took a 
 maternal interest in his aifairs, presented him with a warm 
 rug ; meanwhile Leon tortured himself to find a suitable 
 opportunity to declare his passion. At this period Madame 
 Bovary made the acquaintance of a certain M. Lheureux, 
 a haberdasher and upholsterer of Yonville, who not only 
 offered his goods but long credit ; he would even advance 
 money, if necessary. For the present Ennna kept him at a 
 distance. 
 
 Eventually Madame Bovary divined the passion of her 
 young admirer, and discovered that her own heart was also 
 touched ; she proceeded to indulge herself in the luxury of 
 a romantic virtue. 
 
 ' She heard steps on the staircase ; it was Leon. She got up, 
 and took the first of a pile of dusters from the table, which were 
 there to be hemmed. She seemed very busy when he appeared. 
 
 'The conversation was desultory, Madame Bovary dropping 
 it every minute ; while he stayed there entirely awkward. 
 Seated on a low chair near the fireplace, he turned the ivory 
 workcase in his fingers ; she pushed her needle on from time to 
 time, smoothed out the creases in the stuff with her nail. She 
 did not speak ; he held his tongue, captivated by her silence, as 
 he would have been by her words.
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 171 
 
 ' " Poor fellow ! " thought she. 
 
 ' " Why doesn't she like me ? " he asked himself. 
 
 ' Leon, however, ended by saying that he must one of these 
 days go to Rouen on office business. " Your subscription at the 
 music-seller's is out ; shall I renew it ? " 
 
 '•'No," she replied. 
 
 ' " Why ? " 
 
 '"Because " and tightening her lips, she slowly drew 
 
 out a long needleful of grey thread. 
 
 'This work irritated Leon. Emma's fingers seemed to get 
 sore at the end from it ; a gallant phrase came into his head, 
 but he did not venture on it. 
 
 ' " Then you give it up ? " he resumed. 
 
 '"What?" said she sharply. "The music? Oh, heavens ! 
 Yes ! Have I not my house to keep, my husband to attend to, 
 a thousand things, numbers of duties, which come before 
 that ? " 
 
 'She looked at the clock. Charles was late. Then she 
 played the part of the anxious wife. Two or three times even 
 she repeated : 
 
 ' " He is so good ! " 
 
 ' The clerk had an affection for M. Bovary. But this tender- 
 ness in his direction surprised him disagreeably : none the less 
 he continued his praises, which, he said, he heard everybody 
 utter, above all the chemist. 
 
 ' " Ah ! he is a fine man," resumed Emma. 
 
 ' " Surely," replied the clerk. 
 
 ' And he began to speak of Madame Homais, whose neglected 
 toilette generally formed a subject of amusement for them. 
 
 '"What does that matter?" interrupted Emma. "A good 
 mother does not concern herself about her dress." 
 
 ' Then she relapsed into silence. 
 
 ' It was the same on the following day ; her conversation, 
 her manners, everything changed. She was observed to take 
 her housekeeping more to heart, to go to church regularly, 
 and to rule her servant with greater strictness. 
 
 ' She took Bertha away from the nurse. Felicite used to 
 bring her in, when there were visitors, and Madame Bovary 
 would undress her, in order to show her limbs. She declared
 
 172 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 she adored children ; she was her comfort, her joy, her folly, 
 and she accompanied her caresses with lyrical overflowings, 
 which would have reminded any but the good folk of Yon- 
 ville of La Sachette in Notre Dame de Paris' 
 
 As she devoted herself to her household and her child, 
 so Madame Bovary also devoted herself to her husband. 
 Charles was never so well looked after as at this period. But 
 a reaction followed, and the nervous attacks returned. Emma 
 again believed herself to be miserable. 
 
 One evening the tinkling of the Angelus recalled her 
 convent days to her ; she rose and walked to the church, 
 ' longing for devotion in some form, no matter what, pro- 
 vided she might absorb her whole soul in it, that in it her 
 whole existence might disappear.' 
 
 In the churchyard a number of boys were playing ; they 
 were a confirmation class waiting for the priest. 
 
 ' " Where is the clergyman ? " Madame Bovary asked a young 
 boy, who was amusing himself with shaking the turnstile on its 
 slack pivot. 
 
 ' " He is just coming," he replied. 
 
 ' In fact the door of the presbytery grated ; the Abbe Bour- 
 nisien appeared ; the children fled into the church headlong. 
 
 '"Those rascals!" muttered the ecclesiastic; "always the 
 same ! " 
 
 'And picking up a tattered catechism, over which he had 
 just stumbled : 
 
 ' " They respect nothing ! " 
 
 ' But as soon as he perceived Madame Bovary : 
 
 '"Excuse me," said he, "I did not recognise you." 
 
 ' He stuffed the catechism into his pocket, and stopped, con- 
 tinuing to swing the heavy key of the sacristy between two 
 fingers. 
 
 ' The glow of the setting sun, which fell full on his face, 
 made the stuff of his cassock look shabby, shiny at the elbows, 
 as it was, frayed at the edges. Spots of grease and snufF 
 followed the line of little buttons on his broad chest ; and they
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 173 
 
 became more numerous the further they were from his collar, 
 where rested the abundant folds of his red skin^ spotted with 
 yellow blotches, which disappeared in the coarse greyish 
 hairs on his chin. He had just finished dinner, and breathed 
 noisily. 
 
 ' " How are you .^ '' he added. 
 
 ' " Not very well," replied Emma ; " I am out of health." 
 
 '"Well, well ! So am I," replied the clergyman. " This first 
 heat is astoundingly enervating, is it not .'' Still, you know, 
 it cannot be otherwise ; we are born to suffering, as St. Paul 
 says. But what does M. Bovary think about it .'' " 
 
 ' " He ! " she said, with a contemptuous gesture. 
 
 ' " What ! " resumed the good fellow in amazement ; " he does 
 not prescribe for you ? " 
 
 '"Ah!" said Emma; "it is not earthly remedies that I 
 require." 
 
 ' But the clergyman from time to time looked into the 
 church, where all the boys, kneeling in a row, kept shoving 
 one another with their shoulders, and falling over like a pack of 
 cards. 
 
 '" I should like to know ..." she resumed. 
 
 '"Wait, wait, Riboudet," cried the ecclesiastic in a wrathful 
 voice, " I '11 come and warm your ears for you, naughty scamp ! " 
 
 Then turning to Emma : 
 
 '" It is the son of Boudet the carpenter ; his parents are well 
 off, and let him have his own way, and yet he would learn 
 quickly, if he chose, for he is full of understanding. And I, 
 sometimes by way of a joke, I just call him Riboudet (after the 
 hill by which you go up to Maromme from Rouen), and I even 
 say : Mont Riboudet, ha ! ha ! Mont Riboudet ! The other day 
 I told His Grace this joke, and he laughed at it ... he 
 deigned to laugh at it." ' 
 
 Worthy fellow though he was, the Abbe Bournisien was 
 not the kind of ecclesiastic to comprehend poor Emma's 
 troubles, and the interview ended in disappointment. After 
 the good clergyman had taken a rapid disciplinary excursion 
 into the church : 
 
 ' " Come/' said he, when he had returned to Emma, unfold-
 
 174 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ing his lai-ge bandana handkerchief, a coniei' of which he put 
 between his teeth, " the farmers are much to be pitied ! " 
 
 "'There are others too," she rephed. 
 
 ' " Certainly ! the artisans in the towns, for instance." 
 
 ' " It is not they that ..." 
 
 ' " Pardon me ! I have known poor mothers, virtuous women, 
 veritable saints, I assure you, who were even short of bread." 
 
 '"But those," resumed Emma (and the corners of her mouth 
 twitched as she spoke), " those, M. Bournisien, who have bread, 
 and who have not ..." 
 
 ' " Winter firing," said the priest. 
 
 ' " Oh ! what does that matter ? " 
 
 ' " What does that matter } I must say it seems to me that 
 when one is well warmed, well fed . . . for indeed ..." 
 
 ' " My God ! my God ! " she sighed. 
 
 ' " You are in pain } " said he, approaching with an anxious 
 air ; " it is indigestion, doubtless ? You must go home, Mme. 
 Bovary, and drink a little tea ; that will strengthen you, or per- 
 haps a glass of cold water with some brown sugar." 
 
 ' " Why ? " 
 
 ' And she had the air of some one waking from a dream. 
 
 ' " You were passing your hand over your foi*ehead. I thought 
 you felt a giddiness." ' 
 
 And so the conversation ended. As Emma walked away, 
 she heard the clergyman and his confirmation class : ' Are 
 you a Christian ? ' ' Yes, I am a Christian.' ' What is a 
 Christian ? ' ' He is one who being baptized — baptized — 
 baptized — '' 
 
 On her return home Madame Bovary gave way to her 
 irritable nerves so far as to knock over the unfortunate 
 Bertha, by this time in the toddling stage, so that the 
 child's face was cut against the corner of the table ; then 
 she was seized with a furious attack of maternal tenderness, 
 and lied about the cause of the accident. 
 
 M. Leon left Yonville without declaring his passion to 
 Emma, without divining that it was returned : lie went
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 175 
 
 to Paris to finish his course of legal study there. On the 
 occasion of his departure the great Homais gave expression 
 to the views of a provincial on the subject of the capital. 
 
 ' " Come ! come," said the chemist, smacking his tongue, 
 "stylish dinners at the restaurant, masked balls, champagne 
 — there will be fine goings on, I assure you." 
 
 ' " I do not think he will go to the bad," objected Bovary. 
 
 ' " Nor I," replied Homais smartly, " although he will 
 certainly have to follow the rest at the risk of being taken for a 
 Jesuit. And you don't know the life that these rascals lead in 
 the Quartier Latin with the actresses ! Moreover, the students 
 are very well received at Paris. If they have some little talent 
 for making themselves agreeable, they are admitted to the best 
 society, and there are even great ladies in the Faubourg Saint 
 Germain who fall in love with them, which in the end gives 
 them the opportunity of making very advantageous marriages." 
 
 ' " But," said the doctor, " I am afraid for him that . . . 
 there ..." 
 
 '"You are right," interrupted the apothecary, "there is a 
 reverse to the medal ! And one must continually have one's 
 hand over one's breeches-pocket there. Thus : suppose you 
 are in a public garden, a somebody presents himself, well 
 dressed, even wearing a riband, and the sort of person one 
 would take for a diplomatist ; he addresses you ; you talk ; he 
 is insinuating, offers you a pinch of snuff, or picks up your hat 
 for you. Then a closer connection is established ; he takes you 
 to a cafe, invites you to his country house, introduces you to all 
 kinds of acquaintances between two glasses of wine ; and three 
 parts of the time it is only to plunder your purse for you, or 
 lead you into vicious courses." ' 
 
 The departure of Leon left Madame Bovary in a very 
 miserable condition ; she tried to console herself witli the 
 cultivation of her tastes : bought herself an elegant blue 
 cashmere dress, and a bright-coloured scarf ; took to dress- 
 ing her hair in a variety of different ways, began to learn 
 Italian, began to read philosophy, began to study history,
 
 176 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 began an infinity of things, all of which she abandoned. 
 Charles became anxious about her health ; he invited his 
 mother to pay a visit ; the mother-in-law and daughter-in- 
 law quarrelled. 
 
 One day a country gentleman, who lived just outside 
 Yonville, brought one of his farm men to be bled by 
 Bovary. Justin from the chemist's shop, who had been 
 asked to help, fainted at the sight of blood, so did the 
 patient ; Madame Bovary herself was forced to come to 
 assist in the surgery, and was thus introduced to M. Rodolph 
 Boulanger. 
 
 ' He was at that time thirty-four years old ; he was of an 
 animal temperament and clear intelligence, having moreover 
 had much to do with women, and understanding them well. 
 This one had appeared to him good-looking ; so he continued 
 to think of her and her husband. 
 
 ' " I imagine he is very stupid. She is doubtless tired of him. 
 He has dirty nails, and has not shaved for three days. While 
 he trots after his patients, she remains darning stockings. And 
 she is bored, would like to live in town, dance the polka every 
 evening ! Poor little woman ! She gasps for love like a carp 
 on a kitchen-table for water. Three words of gallantry, and 
 she would adore one, I am sure of it ; it would be tender, charm- 
 ing ! ! ! ! Yes, but how to get rid of her afterwards ? " ' 
 
 Eventually this small country squire made up his mind to 
 try the experiment, and the occasion on which he avowed 
 his passion was that of the great Agricultural Show, which 
 was held at Yonville ; not without some previous working 
 of the oracle on the part of Homais, through the medium of 
 the Rouen Beacon. 
 
 At the Agricultural Show Flaubert brings together the 
 two threads which run through the whole book ; on the one 
 side, we have Homais victorious, and the whole atmosphere 
 in which such persons live and thrive is in full vibration
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 177 
 
 around us ; on the other, Emma's romantic aspirations are 
 satisfied : she finds herself in possession of a lover, wealthy, 
 well-dressed, good-looking. While the notables are har- 
 anguing the assembled agriculturists in the approved style, 
 Rodolph eqvially in the approved style is stimulating the 
 romantic passions of Emma. Both Rodolph's love-making 
 and the political rhapsodies of the ofl^cials are alike stale, 
 commonplace, in every way contemptible. The whole thing 
 is summed up as follows : — 
 
 'M. Derozerays got up, beginning another discourse. His 
 speech was perhaps not so flowery as that of the Councillor; 
 but it was recommended by a more positive character in its 
 style — that is to say, by more special knowledge and more 
 elevated reflections. Accordingly the praise of the Govern- 
 ment occupied less room in it ; religion and agriculture more. 
 The connection between the one and the other was explained, 
 and how they had always uuited in the cause of civilisation. 
 Rodolph was talking to Madame Bovary of dreams, presenti- 
 ments, magnetism. Going back to the cradle of society, the 
 orator depicted to you those savage times when men lived on 
 nuts in the depths of forests. Then they had abandoned the 
 skins of wild beasts, put on clothes, ploughed furrows, planted 
 the vine. Was this last an advantage .'' Was not this discovery 
 after all attended by serious drawbacks .'' M. Derozerays 
 propounded that problem. From magnetism Rodolph had 
 gradually come to affinities, and while the President was quoting 
 Cincinnatus at his plough, Diocletian planting his cabbages, and 
 the Emperors of China inaugurating the year with sowing, the 
 young man was explaining to the young wife that these 
 irresistible attractions were due to some anterior existence. 
 
 ' " So, take our own case," said he, " why did we come to know 
 one another ? What chance willed that ? It is doubtless 
 because our special inclinations, like two rivers, which flow to 
 meet, had driven us through space to one another." 
 
 'And he seized her hand; she did not draw it back.' 
 
 The description of the Agricultural Show ends with the 
 
 M
 
 178 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 account which Hoinais wrote of it, and published in the 
 Rouen Beacon. 
 
 The whole of this chapter, which alike in its design and 
 its execution lifts Flaubert above the level of the mere novel- 
 writer, in which the commonplaces of passion are artfully 
 contrasted, and associated with the commonplaces of middle- 
 class ambition, the result being a full, searching satire, un- 
 surpassed in any literature, would have been cut out, if 
 Flaubert had followed the advice of Maxime Ducamp and 
 his co-editor of the Revue de Paris, Laurence Pichat. It is 
 true that this is a very different thing from the story of 
 Delavuiay ; as Flaubert himself was a very different jierson 
 from Balzac, or Georges Sand, or Alphonse Daudet, or 
 Cherbuliez. 
 
 Before long Madame Bovary had entirely abandoned herself 
 to Rodolph ; but in the end mere adultery proved to her no 
 more satisfactory than marriage : she began to vn^ge Rodolph 
 to run away with her ; meanwhile her romantics had begun 
 to frighten him, and he tlid rim away — without her. 
 
 The result was a brain-fever, from which she recovered to 
 encounter the pecuniary difficulties in which she had by this 
 time allowed Lheureux to entangle her. 
 
 During the course of her intrigue with Rodolph, Homais 
 had on his side debauched poor Charles, There was an 
 ostler at the Golden Lion, one Hippolyte, who suffered from 
 the deformity of a club-foot. Homais had read somewhere 
 in a newspaper of a method of curing this ; he hunted u}) 
 references, turned out books, and though Hippolyte was as 
 active as a hare, persuaded him to allow Bovary to operate. 
 The operation failed ; the leg became gangrened and had to 
 be amj)utatcd. The ignominy of the failure rested with 
 Charles, who had further to submit to the contem])t of his 
 wife.
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 179 
 
 Emma's recovery from illness seemed to restore happiness 
 to the household. The Abbe Bournisien, who had been 
 summoned at the crisis of her illness, used to come to drink 
 cider in the arbom-, and even Binet proved sociable. Lagardy 
 being advertised to sing at Rouen shortly, Homais advised a 
 visit to the theatre as a means of cheering the convalescent ; 
 Charles at once fell in with his plan ; Emma, after showing 
 a little reluctance, consented. 
 
 The opera was ' Lucia di Lammermoor "* ; all Emma's 
 romance was at once awakened : the personality of the singer 
 himself, reputed to travel with three mistresses, was exciting. 
 M. Leon Dupuis, now in an office at Rouen, having finished 
 his com-se at Paris, happened to be present at the perform- 
 ance; he saw and recognised the Bovary party, came to 
 speak to them. Charles was delighted to meet his old friend 
 again : Emma was so much restored by the opera that he 
 suggested she should stay another day and go to the theatre 
 again ; M. Leon would escort her. This plan was agreed to. 
 
 The following day Bovary returned to Yonville, but 
 Emma remained at Rouen. Leon called on her. He was 
 no longer the timid youth ; he had had experience at Paris ; 
 he re-opened the chapter of sentiment at once. Emma held 
 him at a distance, while looking back sentimentally to their 
 former friendship) ; she agreed, however, to meet him the 
 next day at eleven o'clock at the Cathedral. 
 
 As soon as he was gone she wrote an interminable letter 
 withdrawing from the assignation ; then remembered that 
 she had no address whereto it could be sent, and decided to 
 give it him herself at the Cathedral. 
 
 Leon rose early, put on his best clothes, submitted him- 
 self to the hairdresser, bought some violets, arrived at the 
 Cathedral before the time ; boldly entered the church. 
 
 'The Swiss (verger in a very glorious uniform) was at that
 
 180 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 moment standing on the threshold in the middle of the north 
 door beneath the " Dancing Miriam," his plume on his head, 
 rapier at his calf, cane in his hand, more majestic than a 
 cardinal, and shining like a monstrance. 
 
 ' He advanced towards Leon, and with that smile of coaxing 
 benignity which ecclesiastics adopt when they question children : 
 
 * " The gentleman doubtless is a stranger ? He would like to 
 see the curiosities of the church ? " 
 
 ' " No," said the other. 
 
 ' He first made the circuit of the aisles. Then he went to 
 look out into the squai'e. Emma was not coming. He went 
 back to the choir. . . . The Swiss at a distance was inwardly 
 indignant at this individual, who presumed to admire the Cathe- 
 dral alone. He seemed to be conducting himself in a monstrous 
 fashion, to be robbing him in some sort, and almost to be com- 
 mitting a sacrilege. 
 
 ' But a rustle of silk on the pavement, the brim of a hat, a 
 black mantle. ... It was she ! Leon rose and ran to meet 
 her. 
 
 ' Emma was pale ; she walked fast. 
 
 ' " Read ! " said she, giving him a paper. ..." Oh no ! " 
 
 ' And she sharply withdrew her hand to go to the Lady Chapel, 
 where, kneeling against a chair, she began to pray. 
 
 ' The young man was irritated at this whim of devotion ; then 
 he experienced a certain charm in seeing her thus lost in prayer 
 in the middle of an assignation, like an Andalusian Marchioness ; 
 then he was annoyed, for she seemed never likely to stop. 
 
 'Emma prayed, or rather strove to pray, hoping that some 
 sudden resolution would descend to her from heaven ; and to 
 attract the divine succour she filled her eyes with the splen- 
 dours of the altar, she breathed the perfume of the white 
 flowers displayed in the great vases, and listened to the silence 
 of the church, which only increased the tumult of her own 
 heart. 
 
 ' Then she rose, and was departing when the Swiss came up 
 quickly, saying : 
 
 ' " The lady is doubtless a stranger .'' She wishes to see the 
 curiosities of the church .'' " 
 
 ' " No ! " cried the clerk.
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 181 
 
 ' " Why not ? " replied she. 
 
 'For her tottering virtue clutched at the Virgin, at the 
 sculptures, at the tombs, at every vantage. 
 
 'Then in order to proceed methodically, the Swiss conducted 
 them to the entrance near the square, and there showing them 
 with his cane a great circle of black stones in the pavement 
 without inscription or carving : 
 
 ' " There," said he majestically, " is the circumference of the 
 great bell of Amboise. It weighed forty thousand pounds. It 
 had not its equal in Europe. The workmen who cast it died 
 of delight. . . ." 
 
 '"Let us go," said Leon.' 
 
 But he was not to have his way ; the triumphant Swiss 
 drove them round the tombs and altars, and was on the 
 point of forcing them to ascend the spire, when Leon dragged 
 Madame Bovary out of the Cathedral and hailed a cab, just 
 in time to escape the panting Swiss, who was in hot pursuit 
 with a bundle of some twenty volumes. They were works 
 ' which treated of the Cathedral.' A delay in the arrival of 
 the cab gave him time to implore them at least to go out by 
 the north door, and see ' The Resurrection ,"* ' The Last Judg- 
 ment,' ' The Paradise,' ' The King David,' and ' The Damned 
 in the Flames of Hell.' 
 
 At first Madame Bovary objected to embarking in the 
 cab on the ground of propriety, but upon being told by 
 Leon that this was usual in Paris she allowed her scruples 
 to be overcome. 
 
 That vehicle travelled through the whole of Rouen and 
 the outskirts. 
 
 ' It was seen at Saint Pol, at Lescure, at Mont Gargon, at la 
 Rouge-Mare, and in the square of Gaillard-bois ; in the Rue 
 Maladrerie, Rue Dinanderie, in front of Saint-Romain, Saint 
 Vivien, Saint Maclou, Saint Nicaise ; before the Custom House, 
 at the Basse Vieille Tour, at the Trois Pipes, and the Memorial 
 Cemetery. From time to time the driver on his box threw
 
 182 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 despairing glances at the public-houses. He did not understand 
 the mania for locomotion which imposed on these individuals so 
 strong an objection to a halt. He sometimes tried to stop, and 
 immediately he heard wrathful exclamations behind him. Then 
 he whipped up his two jades to the best of his power, heated 
 as they were, and went on, without taking any notice of jolts, 
 running over the curbstones here and there, caring for nothing, 
 demoralised, and almost ciying with thii'st, fatigue, and de- 
 speration. 
 
 ' On the quay in the middle of the trucks and barrels, in the 
 streets, at the corners of the pavements, the trades-folk opened 
 great wondering eyes at this thing, so extraordinary in the 
 province — a carriage with its blinds drawn, thus continually 
 appearing, closer than a tomb, and swaying like a ship. 
 
 ' Once in the middle of the day, out in the country, at the 
 moment when the sun shone its strongest on the old plated 
 lamps, a bare hand passed under the little yellow curtains and 
 threw away fragments of paper, which scattered in the wind, 
 and settled some way off like white butterflies on a field of red 
 clover in flower. 
 
 'Then about six o'clock the carriage stopped in a bye-street 
 in the Beauvoisine quarter, and a lady got out of it, who walked 
 away with her veil down without turning her head.' 
 
 Never was the romance of adultery treated with more 
 contempt than in this passage ; the Swiss, the cabman, the 
 trades-folk in the streets, all combine to drag us down from 
 the sphere of moonlights and troubadours and elective affini- 
 ties to the commonplace details of vulgar life. 
 
 To the editors of the Revue de Paris the wanderings of 
 this cab and the sorrows of its driver appeared vmsuitable 
 for their periodical, and they suppressed the incident; 
 Flaubert insisted upon inserting a note to the effect that a 
 passage had been withdrawn from publication by the Review^ 
 and thereby caused himself to be suspected of having written 
 in a very different strain. The supjn-ession of this passage is 
 a further indication of the complete blindness of Ducamp
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 183 
 
 and Pichat to the real character of the work wliich they 
 were publishing. The incident did not belong to the story 
 of Delaunay, and was therefore incomprehensible to Ducamp. 
 Madame Bovary was met on her retimi to Yonville by her 
 maid Felicite, who brought a message that she was required 
 at once at the house of M. Homais. 
 
 ' The village was as silent as usual. At the corners of the 
 streets there were little crimson heaps steaming, for it was 
 the period of jam-making, and everybody in Yonville made his 
 preserves on the same day. But all admired a much larger 
 heap in front of the chemist's shop, which surpassed all the 
 others with the superiority that a manufactory ought to have 
 over the kitchen ranges of ordinary folk, the satisfaction of a 
 public want over that of mere private needs. 
 
 ' She went in. The great arm-chair was overturned, and even 
 the Rouen Beacon was lying on the ground trailing between two 
 pestles. She opened the passage-door, and in the middle of the 
 kitchen, among brown jars full of currants ready stripped, pounded 
 sugar, lump sugar, scales on the table, pans on the fire, she saw 
 all the Homais, large and small, with aprons which went up to 
 their chins, holding spoons in their hands. Justin was standing 
 there with his head down, and the chemist was shouting : 
 
 ' "Who told you to go and look for it in the capharnaum .^ " 
 
 ' " What is it ? What is the matter ? " 
 
 '" What is the matter .^ " replied the apothecary. "We are 
 making preserves ; they are boiling ; but they were going to 
 boil over, and I ask for another pan. Then he, from his slack- 
 ness, his idleness, goes and takes the key of the capharnaum 
 out of my laboratory, where it hangs on a nail ! " 
 
 'This was the name that the apothecary gave to a small 
 room in the attics full of the utensils and stores of his trade. 
 He often spent long hours there alone, labelling, transferring, 
 tying up ; and he did not regard it as a simple store-room, but 
 as a veritable sanctuary, from whence there afterwards pro- 
 ceeded the works of his hands, — all kinds of pills, boluses, 
 decoctions, lotions, and potions, wherewithal to spread his 
 celebrity in the neighbourhood. Nobody in the world set foot
 
 184 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 there, and he respected it so much that he swept it out himself. 
 In a word, if the shop, open to all comers, was the place where 
 he expanded in his pride, the capharnaum was the spot where 
 Homais egotistically concentrating himself gloried in the 
 practice of his predilections ; so the thoughtlessness of Justin 
 appeared to him perfectly monstrous in its irreverence ; and 
 redder than his own currants, he repeated : 
 
 ' " Yes, of the capharnaum. The key, which encloses the 
 acids and the caustic alkalis ! To have been and fetched a 
 special pan, a covered pan, and which perhaps I shall never be 
 able to use ! Everything has its importance in the delicate 
 operations of our art ! But in heaven's name, I say ! distinctions 
 must be established ; we must not employ for almost domestic 
 purposes that which is destined for pharmaceutical uses ! It is 
 as if one were to carve a chicken with a scalpel, as if a magis- 
 trate , , ." 
 
 "'Now don't vex yourself!" said Madame Homais. 
 * And Athaliah, pulling him by his frock-coat, " Papa ! Papa ! " 
 * " No, let me alone ! " went on the apothecary ; " let me 
 alone. Death and destruction ! One might just as well be a 
 grocer at once, on my word ! There ! go ! Respect nothing ! 
 break ! shatter ! Let the leeches loose ! burn the mallows ! 
 pickle gurkins in the phials ! rend the bandages !" 
 '"You had sent, I think — " said Emma. 
 
 ' " Immediately ! Do you know to what you exposed your- 
 self.'' . . . Did you see nothing in the corner on the left— on 
 the third shelf? Speak — reply — articulate something ! " 
 ' " I do . . . on't know,'' stammered the young fellow. 
 ' " Ah, you don't know ! Well, I know, I do. You saw a 
 bottle, a blue glass bottle, sealed with a yellow seal, which 
 contains a white powder, on which I had myself written : 
 * Dangerous ' ! And do you know what there was inside it ? 
 Arsenic ! and you go and touch that ! Take a pan, which is 
 standing beside it ! " 
 
 ' " Beside it ! " screamed Madame Homais, clasping her hands. 
 " Arsenic ! You might have poisoned us all ! " 
 
 ' And the children began to give vent to shrieks, as if they 
 had already felt horrible pains in their entrails. 
 
 '"Yes, or poison a patient!" went on the apothecary. "I
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 185 
 
 presume you wanted me to go and sit on the criminal's bench 
 in the assize court ! To see me dragged to the scaffold ! Do 
 you not know the care which I take over my operations, in 
 spite of the fact that my experience is something wonderful. 
 Yes, indeed ! I am often terrified at myself, when I reflect 
 upon my own responsibility ! For the government persecutes 
 us, and the absurd legislation which controls us is like a 
 veritable sword of Damocles hanging over our heads !" 
 
 ' Emma no longer thought of asking what was wanted with 
 her, and the druggist went on in panting phrases : 
 
 ' " That is your return for the kindness that is bestowed on 
 you ! That is how you reward the fathei'ly anxiety that I 
 lavish on you ! For where would you be ? What would you 
 do ? Without me ! Who supplies you with food, education, 
 clothes, and all the means of one day figuring with honour in 
 the ranks of society ! But to arrive at that, you must sweat 
 hard at the oar, and get a tough skin to your hands, as they 
 say. Fahricando fitfaber, age quod agis." 
 
 ' He quoted Latin, so furious was he. He would have quoted 
 Chinese and Esquimaux if he had known those two tongues ; 
 for he was at one of those crises in which the whole soul clearlv 
 discloses all that it contains, like the ocean which in the storm 
 reveals from the seaweed of its shores to the sand of its abysses. 
 
 ' And he went on : 
 
 ' " I begin to repent very seriously of having burdened my- 
 self with your person. In other days I should certainly have 
 done better to leave you grovelling in the poverty and the dirt 
 in which you were born. You will never be fit for anything 
 but a keeper of horned beasts. You have no aptitude for 
 science, you scarcely know how to gum a label : and you live 
 here in my house like a canon, like a cow in a clover-field, 
 stuffing yourself ! " 
 
 ' But Emma turning to Madame Homais : " I was told to 
 come . . .' 
 
 ' " Ah ! mercy on us ! " intenaipted the good woman with a 
 melancholy countenance, " how could I tell you ! . . . There is 
 a misfortune." 
 
 ' She did not finish. The apothecary thundered : " Empty 
 it ! Scrub it ! Bring it back ! Be quick about it ! "
 
 186 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 'And shaking Justin by the collar of his jacket, he caused a 
 book to fall out of his pocket. 
 
 ' The boy stooped to pick it up. Homais was too quick for 
 him, and having seized the volume, he gazed at it, his eyes 
 staring, his jaws gaping. 
 
 ' " Con — ^ju — gal Love! " said he, separating the two words very 
 slowly. " Ah ! good, very good, very pretty ! And plates ! . . . 
 Ah, it is too much ! " 
 
 ' Madame Homais stepped forward. 
 
 '"No, don't touch it!" 
 
 ' The children wanted to see the pictures. 
 
 ' " Go out !" said he imperiously. 
 
 ' And they went out. 
 
 ' First he walked up and down the room with long strides, 
 keeping the volume open between his fingers, rolling his eyes, 
 gasping, swelling, apoplectic. Then he came straight up to his 
 apprentice, and planting himself in front of him with his arms 
 crossed : 
 
 ' " Then you have all the vices, miserable little creature ! 
 Beware — you are on a downward slope ! You did not then 
 reflect that this infamous book might fall into the hands of 
 my children, put the spark into their brains, stain the purity of 
 Athaliah, corrupt Napoleon ! He is already developed like a 
 man. Are you quite sure, at least, that they have not read it ? 
 Can you assure me ? " 
 
 ' " But, sir," said Emma, " sir, you had to tell me . , ." 
 
 ' " It is true, madam, your father-in-law is dead ! " 
 
 ' In fact, M. Bovary, the father, had died the day before, 
 suddenly, of an apoplectic fit on leaving the table : and from an 
 excess of care for Emma's sensitiveness, Charles had begged M. 
 Homais to impart this horrible news to her with caution. 
 
 ' He had thought over his phrase, he had rounded it, polished 
 it, balanced it ; it was a masterpiece of ])rudence, and transi- 
 tion, of fine turns and delicacy ; but wrath had been too strong 
 for rhetoric. 
 
 ' Emma, declining any further details, left the shop ; for M. 
 Homais had resumed the course of his vituperation. He was 
 however cooling down, and at present was muttering in a 
 paternal tone, while fanning himself with his cap:
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 187 
 
 * " Not that I altogether disapprove of the work ! The 
 author was a medical man. There are in it certain scientific 
 aspects which a man is none the worse for knowings and which, 
 I would venture to say, a man should know. But later — later. 
 Wait at least till you are a man yourself, and your constitution 
 is formed." ' 
 
 The death of her father-in-law was not of the nature of 
 an overwhelming grief to Emma ; but it had a considerable 
 influence upon her futiu-e destiny. Charles inherited some 
 real property, and M. Lheureux, who had had pecuniary 
 transactions with both sides of the household, skilfully con- 
 trived to suggest to Bovary and his wife that Emma should 
 have a power of attorney to act in her husband*'s name, he 
 being too much occupied to concern himself with business of 
 that kind. 
 
 On the pretext of getting further advice on this subject 
 Emma went to Rouen, where she spent three days with 
 Leon. Presently, by a little adroit manoeuvring, she con- 
 trived to spend every Thursday in his society, under the 
 pretence of taking music-lessons. She used to leave early in 
 the morning before Charles was awake, and travel in the 
 Hirondelle, returning by the same conveyance in the even- 
 ing. As the omnibus returned up the slope of the Bois 
 Guillaume outside Rouen it used to be followed by a loath- 
 some mendicant, who would thrust his face into the vehicle, 
 a hideous countenance, with awful bleeding eyes ; he would 
 sing a country song full of indelicate allusions, and for a 
 few pence ' go through his comedy,' squat on the side 
 of the road, throw back his head, showing his horrible 
 purulent orbits, and utter curious howls as he rapidly 
 rubbed his stomach with both hands. Occasionally when 
 he was too importunate, the driver would lash him with 
 his whip.
 
 188 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 Leon was at first enraptured with this intrigue, but in due 
 time satiety told on him, and Emma, to maintain her hold, 
 devised endless new methods of exciting his passion ; even 
 provoked his jealousy by allusions to a previous lover, a 
 captain of a ship, with whom she had, according to her own 
 statement, cultivated a platonic friendship ; and who was 
 entirely fictitious. 
 
 Lheureux at the same time skilfully used his knowledge of 
 Emma"'s irregularities in order to involve her more and more 
 deeply in debt. Becoming every day more impatient of 
 restraint, she signed bills, and renewed them with absolute 
 recklessness, so that she might always be able to find presents 
 for Leon, or to add to the luxury of their meetings. But the 
 day of reckoning came, Lheureux, under the mask of a 
 friend, a banker at Rouen, into whose hands Emma's bills 
 had fallen, pressed for payment, and drove her into further 
 entanglements. At last one evening, on returning from the 
 town, where she had spent the night at a masked ball with 
 Leon, she found a notice served of the sale of her furniture, 
 unless her debt was paid within twenty-four hours. 
 
 A desperate interview with Lheureux served to j^rove that 
 she had reached the end of her tether. The following 
 morning she went off to Rouen to ask for help from Leon ; 
 he had no money of his own ; he went out and tried to 
 borrow ; he returned : 
 
 ' " I have been to three persons . . . without effect ! " 
 
 ' Then they remained seated opposite one another at the two 
 corners of the fireplace, motionless,' speechless. Emma shrugged 
 her shoulders, tapping with her feet. He heard her muttering : 
 
 ' " If I were in your place I would find it." 
 
 ' " Where, then > " 
 
 ' " At your office," and she looked at him. 
 
 ' An infernal daring darted from her burning eyes, tlieir lids 
 half-closed in a lascivious, provoking fashion, so that the young
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 189 
 
 man felt himself quail under the dumb will of this woman sug- 
 gesting a crime. Fear seized him, and to avoid explanations he 
 hit his forehead, crying : 
 
 * " Moi-el will be back to-night ! He will not refuse me, I 
 hope " — (he was one of his friends, the son of a very rich man 
 of business) — '^ and I will bring it you to-morrow," added he. 
 
 ' Emma did not appear to welcome this hope with as much 
 joy as he had imagined. Did she suspect the lie } He re- 
 sumed, reddening : 
 
 ' " However, if you were not to see me by three o'clock 
 do not wait any longer, my pet. I must go ; excuse me 
 — farewell ! " ' 
 
 And thus vanishes M. Leon Dupuis from our story, 
 Madame Bovary, driven desperate, visited in turn M. 
 Guillaumin the notary, Binet, and, as a last resort, Rodolph 
 Boulanger ; then all her romantic dreams ended in putting 
 her in the position of a discarded mistress, ineffectually 
 dunning the lover who threw her over. Maddened by his 
 refusal, she rushed to the chemist's shop ; she had remem- 
 bered the blue jar on the shelf in the capharnaum. Fortune 
 proved favourable, the Homais family were in their private 
 apartments ; Justin, who could refuse her nothing, was alone. 
 She demanded the sacred key, rushed up to the attic, seized 
 the bottle, and before the eyes of the affrighted youth 
 crammed a handful of the white powder into her mouth ; 
 then she hurried home, calm in the sensation of an accom- 
 plished duty. Before retiring to her room to await the 
 effects of the poison she did not forget to write a note and 
 solemnly deposit it in her desk. It contained the words, 
 ' Accuse nobody.' 
 
 From this moment we feel that Flaubert positively hates 
 the woman whom he has created : he spares her nothing : 
 her whole world crumbles beneath her. The heroines of 
 romances take poison, and die pathetically in an atmosphere
 
 190 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 of religion and sentiment ; not so Emma. To the last she 
 is attended by the busybody Homais ; the worthy but 
 prosaic Abbe Bournisien ; and when she has received the 
 priesfs absolution, and sinks back to await death with 
 resignation, the song of the beggar of the Bois Guillaume is 
 heard coming down the street. 
 
 The scene of the extreme unction was one of those fastened 
 upon by the public prosecutor as an outrage to religion ; it 
 is as follows : — 
 
 ' The room, when they came in, was full of a solemn sadness. 
 The work-table was covered with a white napkin, and on it 
 there were five or six little balls of cotton-wool in a silver plate 
 beside a great crucifix between two flaming candlesticks. 
 
 ' Emma, with her chin on her chest, kept her eyes very wide 
 open, and her poor hands trailed upon the coverlet with that 
 hideous gentle movement of the dying, who seem to be already 
 trying to draw their winding-sheet over them. Pale as a 
 statue, his eyes red as coals, Charles stood opposite her at the 
 foot of the bed, tearless, while the priest, kneeling on one 
 knee, muttered under his breath. 
 
 ' She slowly turned her face, and seemed overcome with joy 
 at discovering the violet stole, doubtless experiencing in the 
 midst of a strange peacefulness the lost delights of her first 
 mystical raptures along with the beginnings of a vision of 
 eternal happiness. 
 
 ' The priest rose to take the crucifix ; then she stretched out 
 her neck like a thirsty man, and, pressing her lips on the body 
 of the Man-God, she bestowed on it with all her dying strength 
 the most fervently loving kiss that she had ever given. Then 
 he recited the Miserealiir and rndulgoitifwi, dipped his right 
 thumb in the oil and began the unctions ; first on the eyes, 
 which had so eagerly coveted all the pomps of the world ; then 
 on the nosti'ils, which delicately scented warm breezes, and 
 amorous odours ; then on the mouth, which had opened to tell 
 lies, which had groaned with pride, and shouted in debauchery ; 
 then on the hands, which had delighted in tender touching ; 
 and lastly on the soles of the feet, once so nimble, when they
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 191 
 
 ran to the satisfaction of their desires, and which would never 
 walk again.' 
 
 These words are all but a literal translation of the Paris 
 ritual for extreme unction ; and the outrage on religion con- 
 sisted in the artistic skill with which the whole scene is led 
 up to and developed. The incongruity between Emma's life 
 and the ease with which she was accepted by the Church 
 in her last moments is brought into startling relief. The 
 implied criticism, not upon the practices of the Roman 
 Catholic Church, but upon the readiness of all men to accept 
 a deathbed repentance, and to put the , vilest sinner on. a 
 level with those who lead irreproachable livesj wounds a 
 sentiment which, though unavowed, is,„ very strong in most 
 of us. What was resented was not Flaubert's irreverence, 
 but his stern severity. 
 
 Even after the death of Madame Bovary her biographer 
 pursues her with unrelenting animosity. The Abbe Bour- 
 nisien and Homais watch in the chamber of death ; they 
 quarrel on religious subjects, become reconciled, eat and 
 drink together. The grotesqueness of life still waits upon 
 the tragedy. 
 
 And then at last we divine that the romantic part has 
 been played, not by the exalted, imaginative, sentimental 
 wife, but by the honest, commonplace, believing, loving- 
 husband. He finds letters, first the note from Rodolph in 
 which he announced his determination to leave Emma, as 
 he ' did not wish to make the misfortune of her life ' : 
 that seemed innocent ; then the letters of Leon, other 
 letters of Rodolph. There could now be no room for 
 doubt ; but Bovary did not cease to love the woman 
 who had wronged him. One day, at a restaurant, he 
 met Rodolph, who invited him to drink. ' I owe you no 
 grudge,' said Charles. ' It was destiny.' The next day he
 
 192 LIFE OF GUST AVE FLAUBERT 
 
 was found dead with a lock of her hair in his hand, in the 
 arbour at the bottom of the garden, where she used to meet 
 her lover. 
 
 The reader will be glad to learn that Homais succeeded in 
 getting himself enrolled in the Legion of Honour, and that 
 no medical man was ever able to establish himself per- 
 manently in Yonville, so firm was the faith of the country- 
 side in the merits of the surreptitious practice of the great 
 apothecary. 
 
 Such is a rapid summary of six years of hard work. Page 
 after page the story was written and re-written, submitted 
 to the criticism of Louis Bouilhet, and then very often 
 written over again. The artistic method is perfect. There 
 is absolutely no padding ; there are no reflections, no moral- 
 isings, very few descriptions of scenery, only such as are 
 absolutely necessary to the comprehension of the tale ; the 
 book is all nerve and muscle. To Ducamp and others there 
 was much that appeared supei-fluous, not required by the 
 story ; they did not see that the story is told as an episode 
 in French provincial life in the nineteenth century, and that 
 the description of Binet with his turning-lathe and fire- 
 brigade is as necessary to the picture as the boots of Bovary. 
 ' A fact is only important in its relation to other facts *" was 
 the maxim of Flaubert ; and from that he deduced that the 
 environment of the chief personages in his romance was as 
 important as the actions of those personages. Throughout 
 the book there is further a silent reference to a sentence to 
 be passed upon the actors different from the verdict, which 
 they would find for themselves. Homais considered himself 
 a very worthy representative of the most enlightened age of 
 the world's history ; we feel that he is a shallow humbug 
 and a charlatan. The Abbe Bournisien was a good-hearted 
 fellow, but he wished also to be a wit and a Christian apolo-
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 193 
 
 gist ; in these capacities he is contemptible. The only per- 
 son in the book whom we like is the one who makes no 
 claims — poor Bovary, who simply loves ; for love, even mis- 
 placed love, is the sanctification of life. As for the two 
 paramom's, Boulanger and Dupuis, they are both infinitely 
 despicable ; the adulterer is likely to be a worthless fellow ; 
 and the literature which applauds self-indulgence at the 
 expense of another person"'s happiness, with the neglect of 
 commonplace domestic duties, is an unwholesome, loathsome, 
 lying literature ; persons who act in accordance with its 
 precepts are hateful. 
 
 That is the lesson we learn from the book which was 
 prosecuted as an outrage on morality. 
 
 Few persons can read Madame Bovary for the first time 
 without a strong sense of discomfort, and the pain caused by 
 the first impression destroys the critical faculty. For many 
 people it is enough to say that a book is painful to condemn 
 it at once as a work of fiction ; the province of fiction is 
 believed to be to amuse, to please, not to hurt. For the 
 sensation of horror caused by a penny dreadful is not an 
 unpleasant sensation, and to read of the thrilling adventures 
 of others is not disagreeable. But a book which gives you a 
 moral jolt, which practically says, ' This and this is the secret 
 desire of your heart, on this you pride yourself,"* such a book, 
 with its eternal ' These be your gods, O Israel ! ' is an outrage 
 upon respectability ; and respectable persons say, ' Such 
 books should be forbidden by law.' It is, however, impos- 
 sible to legislate upon the province of particular forms of 
 literature ; all we can profitably do is to recognise from 
 time to time the forms in which the thought of the age is 
 finding expression. There can be no manner of doubt that 
 what the dramatic form was to the age of Pericles and of 
 Elizabeth, the prose romance is to the nineteenth century.
 
 194 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 The few men who are capable of receiving the impression of 
 the age, of understanding, though unconsciously, its compli- 
 cated forces, and who have further laid upon them the curse 
 of the artist, and are impelled by the necessities of their own 
 being to expound to their fellow-men what they have seen 
 and heard ; these men now choose the prose romance as the 
 artistic form in which their message may best be delivered. 
 To say that deep thinkers have no business to use such a 
 trivial vehicle is idle. 
 
 The literary artist is great just in proportion as his works 
 cause reflection apart from mere emotion. The early narra- 
 tives, such as Defoe's Cavalier^ Smolletfs Roderick Random, 
 Le Sage''s Gil Bias, endeavom- to amuse us by stringing 
 together a number of stories around one person, who is the 
 sole connecting link between them all. They are mere collec- 
 tions of anecdotes, the raw material of art. Between them 
 and such works as Madame Bovary or Romola there is as 
 wide an interval as between the dithyrambic songs of the 
 Greek rustics and the (Edipus Rex. We have passed from 
 the stage of stories strung together, first to the enlarged 
 anecdote with its complex plot, such as The Woman in 
 White, and have arrived at the carefully constructed prose 
 poem, which is philosophy and moral science in a concrete 
 form. The possible reactions of a number of human beings 
 upon one another, the necessary developments of certain 
 tendencies in one human being, are reasoned out and placed 
 before us ; and the whole of a romance is as coherent and 
 harmonious as a statue or a painting : you cannot remove a 
 part without disfiguring the whole or rendering it unintel- 
 ligible. Thus the novel, from being the resource of idle 
 moments, the dissipation of indolent minds, a thing to be 
 preached against, and put away on Sundays, has become the 
 chosen instrument of the gravest thinkers of our age, of our
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 195 
 
 most earnest preachers. Those who object to the works of 
 George EHot because they are so disagreeable, to Madame 
 Bovary because it is so cruel, and declare that such things 
 ought not to be written, are simply stoning the prophets in 
 order to be rid of them and their home-truths.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE MAKING OF ' MADAME BOVARY "" THE PROSECUTION 
 
 Louis Bouilhet was at this time residing in Paris, and from 
 the correspondence addressed to him we get some idea of the 
 sort of pains which Flaubert considered that he ought as a 
 conscientious artist to bestow on his work. 
 
 'I have just spent a good week, alone like a hermit, and as 
 calm as a god. I abandoned myself to a frenzy of literature ; 
 I got up at midday, I went to bed at four in the morning. I 
 dined with Dakno (his dog) ; I smoked fifteen pipes in the day ; 
 I have written eight pages. 
 
 ' I shall contrive that Homais raves about " cheminots " (a 
 kind of turban-shaped cake made at Rouen). This will be one 
 of the secret motives of his journey to Rouen, and further his 
 solitary human weakness. He shall give himself a feast of 
 them in a friend's house in the Rue St. Gervais. Don't be 
 afraid ! They shall be from the Rue Massacre, and they shall 
 be baked in a stove, whose door will be opened with a stick.' 
 
 The ' cheminots '' duly appear in Madame Bovary, and 
 Homais takes a bagful of them home to his wife, but the 
 projected details were mostly suppressed. Flaubert's sense 
 of humour was, as we have seen, apt to run away with him, 
 and Louis Bouilhet sternly repressed its extravagances. The 
 cap in which Charles Bovary first appeared at school was 
 allowed by this severe critic to remain, but a toy, which 
 Flaubert had seen somewhere and been amused by as some- 
 thing abnormally ugly, was rudely withdrawn from the hands 
 
 196
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 197 
 
 of the children of Homais, in which it had been placed by 
 the author. 
 
 ' Bovary goes on pianissimo. Be sure and tell me what kind 
 of monstrosity to post on the slope of the Bois-Guillaume. 
 Ought my man to have an eruption on his face, red eyes, a 
 hump, a nose wanting ? Should he be an idiot, or a bandy ? 
 I am very much puzzled. Devil take father Hugo with his 
 cripples sitting in bowls like snails in the rain ! It is most 
 annoying. 
 
 ' I am going on very slowly. I give myself an accursed lot of 
 trouble. I have just suppressed phrases at the end of five or 
 six pages, which have cost me the work of entire days. It is 
 impossible for me to see the effect of any one of them before it 
 is finished, re-finished, polished. It is an insane way of working, 
 but what can I do ? I have a conviction that the things best 
 in themselves are those that I cut out. One only succeeds in 
 producing an effect by the negation of exuberance ; and exuber- 
 ance is precisely what charms me. 
 
 ' Do you know that my mother about six weeks ago said 
 a splendid thing to me (a thing to make the Muse hang 
 herself for jealousy at not having invented it). Here it is : 
 '• The mania for phrases has dried up your heart." 
 
 ' Try, my good fellow, and send me by next Sunday, or sooner 
 if you can, the following morsels of medical information. They 
 are going up the slopes, Homais is looking at the blind man 
 with the bleeding eyes (you know the mask) and he makes him 
 a speech ; he uses scientific words, thinks that he can cure him, 
 and gives him his address. It is, of course, necessary that 
 Homais should make a mistake, for the poor beast is incurable. 
 If you have not enough in your medicine-bag to supply me 
 with the material for five or six sturdy lines, draw from Follin 
 and send it me. I hope that in a month Mistress Bovary will 
 have the arsenic in her stomach. Shall I bring her to you 
 buried ? I doubt it.' 
 
 ' I. You are an excellent beast to have replied to me so 
 quickly. The idea of " following a regular diet " is excellent, 
 and I accept it with enthusiasm ; as to an operation, that is 
 impossible because of the club-foot, and besides, as it is Homais
 
 198 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 himself who wishes to undertake the cure, all surgery must be 
 excluded. 
 
 'II. I should like some scientific words designating the 
 different parts of the damaged eye (or eyelids). The whole is 
 damaged, and is a mere squash, in which nothing can be dis- 
 tinguished. None the less Horaais employs fine words and 
 distinguishes something to dazzle the gallery. 
 
 ' III. Lastly, he must speak of some pomade (of his own 
 invention .'') good for scrofulous affections, and which he in- 
 tends to use upon the mendicant. I make him invite the 
 beggar to come to visit him at Yonville in order to have my 
 rascal in at Emma's death ! There we are, old fellow. Think 
 a little over all this, and send me something for Sunday. 
 
 ' I am working moderately, and without gusto, or rather with 
 disgust. I am really tired of this work ; it is a regular " impot " 
 to me now. 
 
 ' We shall probably have much to correct : I have five dia- 
 logues in succession, and all say the same thing.' 
 
 ' 1st June 1856. 
 ' Yesterday at last I sent Ducamp the manuscript of Madame 
 Bovary, relieved of about thirty pages, without reckoning several 
 lines cut out here and there. I have suppressed three great 
 morsels of Homais, an entire landscape, the conversations of the 
 middle-class folk at the ball, an article by Homais, etc. etc. 
 You may see, old fellow, that I have been heroic. Has the 
 book gained by it .'' It is at any rate certain that the whole 
 has now more movement.' 
 
 In spite of the removal of so much, the editors of the 
 Revue de Paris were not satisfied ; they found the Bovary 
 still too exuberant, and sent back the manuscript yet further 
 reduced. Flaubert kept tlie copy thus mutilated, and it 
 was found among his papers after his death. To some 
 extent he proved amenable to their criticism, as his reply 
 to Laurence Pichat, Ducamp's co-editor, indicates : — 
 
 ' Dear Friend, — I have just received the Bovary, and first of 
 all I feel the necessity of thanking you for it (if I am coarse, I
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 199 
 
 am not ungrateful) ; you have rendered me a service in accept- 
 ing the book, such as it is, and I will not forget it. 
 
 ' Admit that you thought me, and that you still think me 
 (more than ever perhaps), violently ridiculous ! Some day I 
 shall be delighted to admit that you were right ; I promise 
 you that then I will make you the humblest apologies. But 
 you must understand, dear friend, that before all things I 
 wanted to try an experiment, provided the apprenticeship were 
 not too rough, 
 
 ' Do you really believe that this mean reality, whose repro- 
 duction disgusts you, does not make my gorge rise as much as 
 yours .'' If you knew me better, you would know that I hold 
 the everyday life in detestation. Personally I have always kept 
 myself as far away from it as I could. But aesthetically I wanted 
 this time, and only this time, to exhaust it thoroughly. So I 
 took the thing in an heroic fashion, I mean a minute one, 
 accepting everything, saying everything, depicting everything 
 — an ambitious statement ! 
 
 ' I explain myself badly, but sufficiently well for you to under- 
 stand the real meaning of my opposition to your criticism, judi- 
 cious as it was. You were by way of writing me a different book. 
 
 ' You were hitting at the innermost poetry from which the 
 type upon which it was conceived followed (as a philosopher 
 would say). Lastly, I believed myself to be wanting in what I 
 owed to myself and to you if I performed an act not of convic- 
 tion but of deference. 
 
 ' Art claims for herself neither complaisance nor politeness, 
 nothing but faith — faith always, and liberty. And on that 
 point I cordially shake hands with you. Under the barren tree 
 with the ever-gi*een leaves, entirely yours.' 
 
 The spirit in which Flaubert met the action which the 
 Government brought against the author of Madame Bovary 
 is well illustrated by the following letter to Madame Maiu-ice 
 Schlesinger (an old friend of the Trouville days), written on 
 January the 14th, 1857, when the prosecution was still only 
 pending : — 
 
 ' How I have been touched, dear lady, by your kind letter !
 
 200 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 The questions you ask me about the author and the book have 
 come straight to the right address, don't doubt that. Here then 
 is the whole story. The Revue de Paris, in which I pubHshed 
 my novel, had already been twice warned, as being a pei'iodical 
 hostile to the Government. Then it was thought very clever 
 to suppress it at one blow, as guilty of immorality and irreligion ; 
 in the end passages were picked out at random from my book, 
 both licentious and impious ; I had to appear before a magis- 
 trate, and the action has begun. But I have made a vigorous 
 stir among my friends, who have bustled about a bit for me 
 among the guardian angels of the capital. In short, I am 
 assured that all is stopped, though I have as yet no official 
 answer. I do not doubt of my success ; the whole thing was 
 really too stupid. I intend, therefore, to publish my novel in a 
 volume. You will receive it in about six weeks, I think, and I 
 will mark for your amusement the incriminated passages. One 
 of them, a description of extreme unction, is only a page of 
 the Paris ritual put into French — but the good folk who 
 watch over the maintenance of religion are not strong in 
 catechism. 
 
 ' However that may be, I should have been condemned — yes, 
 condemned — to one year's imprisonment, without counting a 
 fine of a thousand francs. Further, each fresh volume from 
 your friend would have been cruelly watched, and cleansed by 
 our respected police, and a fresh offence would have taken me 
 again " to the damp straw of the dungeons " for five years : in 
 a word, it would have been impossible for me to print a line. 
 So, then, I have learned (1) that it is very disagreeable to be 
 mixed up in a political question ; (2) that social hypocrisy is a 
 serious matter. But this time it has been so stupid that it has 
 been ashamed of itself, given up its prey, and withdrawn into 
 its den. 
 
 'As to the book itself, which is moral, super-moral, and to 
 which the Monthyon prize would be given — an honour which I 
 do not covet — if its ways of proceeding were less free, it has 
 obtained all the success that a novel published in a periodical 
 can obtain.' 
 
 Flaubert was mistaken. The Government did not abandon
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 201 
 
 the prosecution, and on the 23rd of January he writes to his 
 old friend Jules Cloquet : — 
 
 ' I beg to inform you that to-morrow, the twenty-fourth of 
 January, I honour the criminals' bench with my presence, sixth 
 chamber of the Executive police, at ten o'clock in the morning. 
 Ladies are admitted ; costume must be decent and in good style. 
 
 ' I do not count on any justice at all. I shall be condemned, 
 and have to pay the highest possible fine perhaps ; a pleasant 
 reward for my toils ; noble encouragement given to literature. 
 . . . But one thing consoles me for these stupidities : it is that 
 I have found so much sympathy with myself and my book. I 
 count yours in the first rank, my dear friend. The approval of 
 certain minds is more flattering than the prosecutions of the 
 police are dishonouring. Now, I defy the whole French magis- 
 tracy, with its policemen, and the whole Committee of Public 
 Safety, including its spies, to write a novel which will please 
 you as much as mine. These are the proud thoughts which I 
 propose to cherish in my dungeon.' 
 
 The result of the action has been already mentioned. 
 Though the Government saw in Madame Bovary a danger 
 to morality, others were of a different opinion ; while the 
 case was still undecided, Flaubert received a letter from a 
 lady unknown to him, strongly praising and thanking him 
 for his work. This letter was the first of a correspondence 
 which continued more or less intermittently for fifteen years. 
 It will be more convenient and instructive to deal with it 
 separately.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 ' SALAMMBo/ 
 
 The scandal attaching to Madame Bovary^ and its subse- 
 quent success, caused its author to become one of the lions 
 of Paris. From this time the circle of his acquaintance was 
 largely increased, and we meet with the names of well-known 
 men and women in his correspondence. He did not, how- 
 ever, give himself up to the pleasures of popularity ; no 
 sooner was the Bovary off his hands than he began the 
 heavy course of reading necessary, according to his ideas, to 
 the production of Salammbo. 
 
 Maxime Ducamp is of opinion that the work by which 
 Flaubert stands or falls is Salammbo^ that in that he is more 
 himself than in any other of his books. In other words, if 
 Salammbo is a great work, Flaubert is a great writer, and 
 vice versa. 
 
 Salammbo was published at the end of 1862, and repre- 
 sents six years'* work. The strength and defects of this work 
 can most easily be gathered from Flaubert's reply to a criti- 
 cism written by M. Frcehner, editor of the Revue Contevi- 
 poraine. To understand this, however, a slight preliminary 
 outline of the story is necessary. 
 
 Salammbo is a narrative of the war waged on Carthage by 
 her Mercenaries after the first Punic War. The struggle 
 lasted a little over two years, and was brought to an end by 
 Hamilcar Barca, the father of the great Hannibal, who 
 enticed the Mercenaries into a defile and exterminated them. 
 
 202
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 203 
 
 In the war itself there were no striking episodes, and of the 
 personalities of the chief actors very little is known. The 
 moving spirits ni the attack upon Carthage were Spendius, 
 a quick-witted Greek, who had been a slave, and Matho, a 
 Libyan soldier. Inside Carthage the work of defence was 
 hampered at the outset by jealousies between the party of 
 Barca, favoured by the populace, and the oligarchy of 
 Carthage. Flaubert does his best to reconstruct ancient 
 Carthage, materially and morally, to show us the picture of 
 a people entirely given up to the acquisition of wealth, un- 
 heroic, devoid of chivalry, but capable of obstinate and 
 ferocious resistance to an enemy when in extremity. He 
 depicts them insensible to human suffering, hating and de- 
 spising with Hebrew exclusiveness all alien races. The 
 Mercenaries, on the other hand, are elaborately portrayed 
 with the reckless habits of soldiers of fortune, pugnacious and 
 careless of life rather than cruel ; brave but undisciplined. 
 
 To connect the movement inside the town and outside 
 Flaubert invented Salammbo, the daughter of Hamilcar, with 
 whom Matho, the leader of the Mercenaries, is in love, 
 having seen her on the occasion of a feast given to the 
 soldiers in Hamilcar's garden. It is the furious, insane, con- 
 suming passion for Salammbo which keeps Matho ranging 
 around the walls of Carthage. 
 
 Salammbo had been brought up by Schahabarim, the 
 high priest of Tanit, the Phoenician Venus, She had no 
 knowledge of the vulgar and impure forms of worship con- 
 nected with this deity ; her time was spent in prayer and 
 fasting, in vigils, in ceremonial observances ; none of these 
 availed to still the strange disquiet of her heart ; she yearned 
 for an initiation into further mysteries, whose nature she 
 could not divine. 
 
 Within the inmost cell of the labyrinthine temple of
 
 204 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 Tanit was suspended the zaimph, the sacred veil of the god- 
 dess. On the possession of this veil hung the destinies of 
 Carthage ; so long as it remained draped over a formless 
 stone, the most holy embodiment of the Rabbetna, the god- 
 dess watched over Carthage ; were it once lost, she would 
 follow the fortunes of the man or people into whose posses- 
 sion it passed. Salammbo had never seen the zaimph, in- 
 deed the sight of the mystic web was believed to bring death 
 upon those who beheld it with eyes unpurified, but it and 
 its potency largely filled her imagination. She often im- 
 plored Schahabarim to allow her to make herself fit to 
 behold it by the necessary prayers and ceremonies. He 
 evaded the subject, or rebuked her presumptuous curiosity. 
 
 Spendius, who had been a slave in the palace of Hamilcar, 
 was well aware of the existence of the zaimph, and of the 
 superstition connected with it. As soon as the Mercenaries 
 declared war upon Carthage, he formed the idea of stealing 
 it. From the beginning he had attached himself to Matho, 
 knew of his love-sickness, had divined in him the right man 
 to lead the Mercenary forces, and aware of his passionate 
 longing to enter Carthage again, determined to make use of 
 him in the enterprise of carrying off the zaimph. 
 
 By means of the great aqueduct Spendius and Matho 
 entered Carthage in the night : they penetrated the inner- 
 most recesses of the temple of Tanit, lifted the ziiimph from 
 its hooks. Matho wrapped it over his head and shoulders, 
 and then refused to leave Carthage till he had seen Salammbo, 
 Guided by Spendius, he made his way to the sleeping-chamber 
 of Hamilcar 's daughter ; she awoke to see a glorious man, 
 robed in the holy garment of the goddess, standing before 
 her. At first dazzled, she soon recovered herself sufficiently 
 to curse the enemy of her race, the spoiler of its divinity, 
 and then alarmed her household. Spendius escaped un-
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 205 
 
 noticed. Matho walked out through the waking town amid 
 the howls of the inhabitants, protected by the sanctity of the 
 stolen veil. 
 
 Flaubert then relates in elaborate detail the history of the 
 Mercenary war. His inveterate satirical humour reveals itself 
 in his description of the warlike preparations made by 
 Hanno, the incompetent colleague, but rival, of Hamilcar ; 
 while the drill and military discipline of the citizens of 
 Carthage recall the Garde Nationale. The Mercenaries, 
 owing to a clever device of Spendius, defeated Hanno and 
 his elephants. Despair seized the rulers of Carthage. At 
 this moment Hamilcar, long absent on his duties as sufFete 
 of the sea, returned. The Mercenary forces had always been 
 closely associated with him ; he had commanded them in 
 various wars ; he was suspected of wishing to make himself 
 absolute monarch of Carthage by their aid. For this reason 
 Hanno and the oligarchical party, while the Mercenaries were 
 still in the city, had sent them to feast in the gardens of 
 Hamilcar's palace ; they counted upon the mischief which 
 these rough guests would work to produce a breach between 
 them and their general. Nor were they disappointed. 
 Hamilcar returned to find his trees burned, his slaves freed 
 or mutilated, his family elephants slain or hideously dis- 
 figured ; worse than all, to hear a horrible insinuation of 
 Matho''s nocturnal visit to Salammbo. The revengeful man 
 — the same man who afterwards caused his six-year-old son 
 to swear to punish the Romans — became possessed with the 
 fierce longing to destroy those who had thus outraged his 
 home, wounded his family pride. He prosecuted the war 
 with vigour, but not at first with striking success. Carthage 
 felt the loss of the zilimph ; execrated Salammbo. Schaha- 
 barim persuaded her that it was her duty to recover the holy 
 veil. As soon as she formed this resolution her family serpent,
 
 206 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 which had hitherto been ailing, began to recover health. 
 Clearly the gods of her family and country smiled on her 
 enterprise. 
 
 The forces of Carthage and the Mercenaries were at this 
 time encamped close to one another in the mountains neai* 
 Hippo Zaryta. Conveyed by a slave provided by Schaha- 
 barim, Salammbo having first ceremonially enlaced herself 
 in the folds of the family serpent, made her way to the tent 
 of Matho ; she demanded the sacred veil. In the course of 
 the night a fire broke out in the camp, and in the confusion 
 that followed Salammbo made her way out of the tent of 
 the Mercenary chieftain with the ziiimph, and arrived at her 
 father''s headquarters, in the sight of the whole army, just as 
 the sun rose. That day the Carthaginians achieved a com- 
 plete victory ; and Salammbo was betrothed to a Numidian 
 chieftain Narrhavas, whose desertion from the Mercenaries 
 had occurred at this opportune moment. 
 
 The victory of Hamilcar was not, however, complete. 
 The Mercenaries were still strong enough to lay siege to 
 Carthage — to cut the aqueduct. 
 
 Flaubert describes the sufferings of the besieged city in 
 detail, the climax being an awful scene, in which the de- 
 spairing citizens offer their children to Moloch. This 
 hideous sacrifice was followed by rain. 
 
 Soon after Hamilcar appeared before the city walls, and 
 by the semblance of flight contrived to draw away the army 
 of the Mercenaries several days'* march into the defile of the 
 Hatchet, where he had prepared a trap for them. They 
 were surrounded, and most of them slain. Among the few 
 prisoners reserved from the massacre to grace the triumph of 
 Hamilcar in Carthage was Matho. That the wrath of the 
 people might be satisfied, and each have a share in the 
 vengeance, he was condemned to run the gauntlet through
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 207 
 
 the streets, and his bleeding form, scarcely recognisable as 
 human, threw the last living glance of its dying eyes up to 
 the tribunal in front of the temple of Khamon, where 
 Salammbo was enthroned alongside of Narrhavas. A few 
 moments afterwards Salammbo herself fell dead in the arms 
 of her betrothed. 
 
 ' Thus perished Hamilcar^s daughter for having touched 
 the veil of Tanit/ 
 
 Flaubert's own estimate of the defects of his own book is 
 as follows (he is replying to a criticism of Sainte-Beuve) : — 
 
 ' 1. The pedestal is too large for the statue. Now, as one 
 never sins by excess, but always by defect, there should have 
 been a hundred pages more given to Salammbo alone. 
 
 ' 2. Some transitions are wanting. They existed ; I cut them 
 out, or over-shortened them, in the dread of being wearisome. 
 
 ' 3. In Chapter vi. all that refers to Gisco is of the same 
 strain as the second part of Chapter ii. (Hanno). It is the same 
 situation, and there is no advance in the effect. 
 
 ' 4. All that reaches from the battle of the Macar to the 
 sei-pent, and all Chapter xiii. to the numbering of the Mercen- 
 aries, sinks — disappears in the memory. These are passages 
 on the background, dry, transitional, that I, unfortunately, 
 could not avoid, and which render the book heavy in spite of 
 the efforts of agility that I was able to make. These are the 
 passages which have cost me most, which I love the least, and 
 for which I am the most grateful to myself. 
 
 ' 5. The aqueduct. Confession — My secret opinion is that 
 there was no aqueduct at Carthage, in spite of the existing ruins 
 of the aqueduct. So I have taken care to anticipate all objec- 
 tions by a hypocritical phrase for the benefit of the antiquaries. 
 I put my feet in the trough clumsily by mentioning that it was 
 a Roman invention, new at that time, and that the present 
 aqueduct was reconstructed upon the old one. The recollec- 
 tion of Belisarius cutting the Roman aqueduct of Carthage 
 haunted me, and then it was such a splendid way[of introducing 
 Spendius and Matho ! Never mind, my aqueduct is a weak 
 spot ! Coiifiteor.
 
 208 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 * 6. Another, and last bit of cheating — Hanno. Through love 
 of clearness I have falsified history in the matter of his death. 
 He certainly was, it is true, crucified by the Mercenaries, but 
 in Sardinia. The general crucified at Tunis opposite Spendius 
 was called Hannibal, But what confusion that would have 
 caused to the reader ! 
 
 ' Such is, dear master, the worst there is in my book, accord- 
 ing to my own opinion. I do not tell you what good I find in 
 it. But be assured that I have not made an imaginary Carthage. 
 Documentary statements about Carthage exist, and they are 
 not all in Movers. It is necessary to go and look for them a 
 little farther off. Thus Ammianus Marcellinus has supplied 
 me with the exact shape of a gate ; the poem of Corippus (the 
 Johamiid) with many details on the African populations, etc. etc' 
 
 Flaubert"'s admissions as to his own failures are interesting, 
 but they do not hit the point. Salammbo is neither romance 
 nor history ; it is too minute for the former, and not diffuse 
 enough for the latter. It is none the less such a work as 
 only a giant could achieve, and it is a gigantic failure. 
 
 The most convincing proof of the justice of the above 
 verdict is afforded by Flaubert's defence of his work against 
 the criticisms of M. Froehner, which at the same time reveals 
 his strength. We can understand the enormous respect felt 
 by his contemporaries for a controversialist of such sound 
 and extensive erudition, who could hit out so neatly and 
 with such force ; we further learn by this striking illustra- 
 tion what he meant by conscience in art, and how inartistic 
 might be his methods : — 
 
 'Sir, — I have just read your article on Salairimho which 
 appeared in the Revue Contemporaine of the 31st of December 
 1862. In spite of the habit I have formed of never replying to 
 any criticism, I cannot accept yours. It is full of propriety, and 
 of things extremely flattering to me ; but as it throws a doubt 
 upon the honesty of my researches, you will allow me, if you 
 please, here to take exception to several of your assertions. 
 
 ' I will first ask you, sir, why you so persistently associate
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 209 
 
 me with the Campana Collection^ affirming that it has been my 
 permanent resource and inspiration. Now, I had finished 
 Salarnmbo in the month of March, six weeks before the open- 
 ing of that Museum. There is a mistake to begin with. We 
 shall find some more serious. 
 
 ' I make^ sir, no pretence to archaeology. I have published 
 my book as a romance, without preface, without notes, and I am 
 surprised that a man like you, famous by works of such import- 
 tance, should waste his leisure on such light literature ! I do 
 however know enough about it, sir, to venture to say, that you 
 are completely wrong from one end to the other of your work, 
 the whole length of your eighteen pages, in each paragraph, 
 and in every line. 
 
 ' You find fault with me " for not having consulted Falbe or 
 Dureau de la Malle, by whom I might have profited." A 
 thousand pardons ! I have read them, more often than you 
 perhaps, and on the very ruins of Carthage. That you should 
 know " nothing satisfactory about the form of the place or its 
 principal quarters " is very possible ; but others, better informed, 
 do not share your scepticism. If we do not know where the 
 suburb Adas was, the place called Fuscianus, the exact position 
 of the principal gates of which we have the names, etc., we do 
 know well enough the aspect of the town, the architectural 
 character of its walls, the Taenia, the Mole, and the Cothon. 
 We know that the houses were plastered with bitumen, and the 
 streets paved ; we have an idea of the Anco described in my 
 fifteenth chapter ; we have heard tell of Malqua, of Byrsa, of 
 Megara, of the Mappalia, and the Catacombs, and of the temple 
 of Eschmoun, placed on the Acropolis, and that of Tanit, a 
 little to the right, when standing with one's back to the sea. 
 All that is to be found (not to speak of Pliny, of Appian, and 
 Procopius) in that same Dureau de la Malle, whom you accuse 
 me of not knowing. It is then to be regretted, sir, that you 
 did not " enter into tiresome details to show " that I had no 
 idea of the position and arrangement of ancient Carthage, 
 " still less than Dureau de la Malle," you add. But what must 
 one believe .'' to whom trust one's self, since you have not up 
 to the present been so obliging as to reveal your own system of 
 Carthaginian topography ?
 
 210 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' I do not possess, it is true, any text to prove to you that 
 there existed a street of the Tanners, of the Perfumers, of the 
 Dyers. It is in any case a probable hypothesis, you must admit. 
 But I did not invent Kinisdo and Cynasyn, words, say you, 
 whose structure is foreign to the spirit of the Semitic languages. 
 Not so foreign, however, since they are all in Gesenius — almost 
 all my Punic names, disfigured according to you, being taken 
 from Gesenius {Scrtptura; linguceque Phcenicice, etc.) or from 
 Falbe, whom I have consulted, I assure you. 
 
 ' An Orientalist of your erudition, sir, should have had a little 
 more indulgence for the Numidian name Naravasse, which I 
 write Nar'Havas, from Nar-el-haouah, "fire of breath." You 
 might have divined, that the two m's of Salammbo were put 
 expressly to cause it to be pronounced Sala???, and not Sala??, 
 and you might have charitably imagined that £gates instead of 
 ^Egates was a printer's error, corrected for the matter of that in 
 the second edition of my book, anterior by a fortnight to your 
 admonitions. It is the same with " Scissites" for " Syssites" and 
 the word Kabiri (which had been printed without a K — horrors ! 
 even in the most serious works, such as the ReligioJis of Ancient 
 Greece by Maury). As for Schalischim, if I have not written 
 (as I ought to have done) Rosch-eisch-Schalischim, it was to 
 shorten an already over-repellent name, further, not imagining 
 that I should be examined by a philologist ... (a criticism on 
 two French words used by Frcehner). 
 
 ' Still one thing, however ! Why have you underlined the and 
 in this phrase, somewhat mutilated, of ray 156th page : "Buy me 
 Cappadocians and Asiatics." Is it to shine by trying to make 
 the dunces believe that I do not distinguish between Cappa- 
 docia and Asia Minor .'' But I know it, sir, I have seen it, I 
 have taken walks in it ! 
 
 ' You have read me so carelessly that you nearly always quote 
 me wrong. I have nowhere said that the priests formed a 
 separate caste ; nor, page 109, that the Libyan soldiers were 
 possessed with the desire to drink iron, " but that the Mercen- 
 aries threatened the Carthaginians with making them drink 
 iron" ; nor, page 108, that the guards of the legion "wore in 
 the middle of their foreheads a silver horn to make them re- 
 semble rhinoceroses," but "their big horses had," etc.; nor, page
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 211 
 
 29, that the peasants one day amused themselves with crucify- 
 ing two hundred lions. The same remark applies to those un- 
 fortunate Syssities, a term which I have used according to you, 
 " doubtless not knowing that this word signified private cor- 
 porations." " Doubtless " is kind. But doubtless I knew what 
 these corporations were, and the etymology of the word, since 
 I translated it into French the first time it appears in my 
 book, page 7 : Syssities, companies (of merchants) who used 
 to eat together. You have in the same way misquoted a 
 passage of Plautus, for it is not demonstrated in the Pcenubis 
 that " the Carthaginians knew all languages," which would 
 have been a strange privilege to be enjoyed by a whole nation ; 
 there is simply in the prologue, i. 112, "Is omnes linguas 
 scit," which must be translated : " He knows all languages " — 
 the Carthaginian in question, and not all the Carthaginians. 
 
 ' It is not true to say that " Hanno was not crucified in the 
 Mercenary war, seeing that he commanded armies long after- 
 wards," for you will find, sir, in Polybius, that the rebels seized 
 his person, and fastened him to a cross (in Sardinia, it is true, 
 but at the same period). Book i. chap. xvii. It is not then for 
 this personage to complain of M. Flaubert, but rather Polybius 
 who would have to complain of M. Froehner. 
 
 ' As for the sacrifices of children, it is so far from impossible 
 that they were burned alive in the siege of Hamilcar, that they 
 were still burned in the time of Julius Caesar and of Tiberius, 
 if one may trust Cicero (pro Balba) and Strabo (Book in). How- 
 ever, "The statue of Moloch does not resemble the infernal 
 machine described in Salammbo. This figure, composed of 
 seven compartments placed one on the top of the other, to hold 
 the victims, belongs to the religion of Gaul. M. Flaubert 
 has no pretext in analogy to justify his audacious transference." 
 
 ' No — I have no pretext, that is true ! But I have a text, to 
 wit the text, the very description, of Diodorus to which you 
 refer, and which is no other than mine, as you will be able to 
 convince yourself by condescending to read, or read again Book 
 IV. chap. 20 of Diodorus, to which you will add the Chaldaic 
 paraphrase of Paul Fage, of which you do not speak, and which 
 is quoted by Selten, Be diis Syriis pp. 164-170, with Eusebius 
 Introductio7i to the Gospels, Book i.
 
 212 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' How does it come to pass, too, that history says nothing of 
 the miraculous veil, since you yourself say " that it used to be 
 shown in the temple of Venice, but much later, and first at the 
 period of the Roman Emperors " ! Now I find in Athenaeus xii. 
 58 the very detailed description of this veil, although history 
 says nothing about it. It was bought from Dionysius the Elder 
 for a hundred and twenty talents, taken to Rome by Scipio 
 Emilianus, carried back to Carthage by Caius Gracchus, returned 
 to Rome under Heliogabalus, then was sold to Carthage. All 
 that moreover is to be found in Dureau de la Malle, by whom I 
 have profited, certainly. 
 
 ' Three lines lower down you affirm with the same . . . can- 
 dour that " most of the other gods invoked in Salammbo are 
 pure inventions," and you add : "Who has ever heard speak of 
 an Aptouchus .''" Who ? L'Avez-ac (Cyrenaica) in connection 
 with a temple in the neighbourhood of Cyrene ; "^of a Schaoul .''" 
 but it is a name, which I give to a slave (see my ninety-first 
 page) ; " or of a Matismann .'' " He is mentioned as a god by 
 Corippus. (See Johcmneid and Mem. de I' Academie des Inscripi., 
 tome xii. p. 181.) "Who does not know that Micipsa was 
 not a divinity but a man.''" Now that is just what I say, 
 sir, and very clearly, in that same ninety-first page, when 
 Salammbo calls her slaves : " Here, Kroum, Euva, Micipsa, 
 Schaoul." 
 
 ' You accuse me of taking Ashtaroth and Astarte for two 
 distinct divinities. But at the beginning, page 48, when Sal- 
 ammbo invokes Tanit, she invokes her by all her names at once : 
 '• Anaitis, Astarte, Derceto, Ashtaroth, Tiratha. " And I have 
 even taken care to say a little further on, page 52, that she 
 repeated "all these names without their having any distinct 
 signification for her." Can you be like Salammbo ! I am 
 tempted to believe it, since you make Tanit the goddess of war, 
 and not of love, of the female element, moist, fertile, in spite of 
 TertuUian, and of this very name Tiratha, the explanation of 
 which, somewhat indecent, but plain enough, you will find in 
 Movers, Phenic, Book i. p. 574. 
 
 ' You are also astounded at the apes consecrated to the moon, 
 and the horses consecrated to the sun. " These details," you 
 are sure, "are not found in any ancient author, nor in any
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 213 
 
 authentic record," Now as for the apes I will permit myself, 
 sir, to remind you that in Egypt baboons were consecrated to 
 the moon, as they are still to be seen upon the walls of the 
 temples, and that the Egyptian cults had penetrated into 
 Libya and into the oases. As for the horses I do not say that 
 there were any consecrated to ^sculapius, but to Eschmoun, 
 assimilated with iEsculapius, lolaiis, Apollo, the Sun. Now I 
 see the horses consecrated to the Sun in Pausanias (Bk. i. 
 cap. i.) and in the Bible (2 Kings xxxii.). But perhaps you 
 will deny that the temples of Egypt are authentic remains, and 
 the Bible and Pausanias ancient authors. 
 
 ■^In connection with the Bible, sir, I will further take the 
 great liberty of calling your attention to the second volume of 
 Cahen's translation, p. 1S6, where you will read this: "they 
 wore on their necks, hanging by a gold chain, a little figure in 
 precious stones, which they used to call Truth. The debates 
 opened, when the president placed the image of Truth in front 
 of him." This is a quotation from Diodorus. Here is another 
 from iElian : " The eldest among them was their chief and 
 their judge; he used to wear round his neck an image in 
 sapphire. This image was called Truth." It is in this way, sir, 
 that " that Truth is a pretty invention of the author's." 
 
 ' But everything astonishes you : the molobathrum, which is 
 equally well written (with all respect to you) malobathrum or 
 malabathrum, the gold dust, which is collected to-day, as 
 formerly, on the shore of Carthage, the ears of the elephants 
 painted blue, the men who daub themselves with vermilion and 
 eat vermin and apes, the Lydians in women's dresses, the lynx 
 carbuncles, the mandrakes, which are in Hippocrates, the 
 chainlet on the ankles, which is in the Song of Songs (Cahen, 
 t. xvi. 37), and the irrigation with silphium, the beards in 
 bags, the crucified lions, etc. . . . everything ! 
 
 ' Well — sir. No. I did not " borrow all these details from the 
 negroes of Senegambia." I refer you for the elephants to 
 Armandi's work, p. 256", and to the authorities that he indicates, 
 such as Florus, Diodorus, Ammianus Marcellinus, and other 
 negroes from Senegambia. 
 
 ' As for the nomads who eat apes, chew lice, and daub them- 
 selves with vermilion, as you might be asked "from what
 
 214 LIFE OF GUST AVE FLAUBERT 
 
 source the author has derived this precious information," and 
 as "you would be," according to your own admission, "very 
 much embarrassed to say," I will give you, with all humility, 
 some indications, which may facilitate your researches, 
 
 ' " The Mascii . . . paint their bodies with vermilion. The 
 Gysarites paint themselves all over with vermilion, and eat 
 apes. Their wives (those of the Adrymachydes), if they are 
 bitten by a louse, take it, and bite it, etc." You will see all 
 that in the fourth book of Herodotus, in chapters 194, 191, and 
 l68. I have no difficulty in telling you. 
 
 ' The same Herodotus informed me, in the description of the 
 army of Xerxes, that the Lydians had women's dresses ; further, 
 Athenaeus, in his chapter on the Etruscans, and their resem- 
 blance to the Lydians, says that they wore the dresses of 
 women ; lastly, the Lydian Bacchus is always represented in a 
 female costume. Is this sufficient about the Lydians and their 
 garments ? 
 
 The beards covered in bags in sign of mourning are in Cahen 
 (Ezekiel xxiv. 17) and on the chins of Egyptian colossi, those 
 of Aboo-Simbal among othei's ; the carbuncles formed by the 
 urine of the lynx, in Theophrastus, book on Gems, and in Pliny 
 Bk. VIII. chap. Iviiii. And as for what concerns the crucified 
 lions (whose number you bring up to two hundred, in order, 
 doubtless, to make me a present of an absurdity, which is not 
 mine), I beg you to read in the same book of Pliny the 
 eighteenth chapter, where you will learn that Scipio J^milianus 
 and Polybius, walking together in the country near Carthage, 
 saw some of them tortured in this fashion : " Quia caeteri metu 
 pcEnae similis absterrentur eadem noxia." Are these, sir, the 
 passages taken indiscriminately from the Univers piltorcsque, 
 and "which the higher criticism has successfully used against 
 me " ? Of what high criticism do you speak ? Of your own ? 
 
 'You divert yourself prodigiously with the pomegranates 
 watered with silphium. But this detail, sir, is not mine. It is 
 in Pliny, Bk. xxii. chap, xlvii. I am much concerned for 
 your joke about " the hellebore which ought to be cultivated 
 at Charenton " ; but as you say yourself, " The most penetrating 
 mind cannot supply the want of sound knowledge." 
 
 'You have gone completely wrong in affii-ming that "among
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 215 
 
 the precious stones of Hamilcar's treasure more than one be- 
 longs to the Christian legends and superstitions." No ! sir. 
 They are all from Pliny and Theophrastus. 
 
 ' The emerald pillars at the entrance of the temple, which 
 make you laugh, for you are gay, are mentioned by Philostratus 
 (Aj)ollojiii Vita) and by Theophrastus (Treatise on Gems). 
 Heeren (v. 11) quotes his phrase: "The greatest Bactrian 
 emerald is at Tyre in the temple of Hercules. It is a column 
 of some size." Another passage of Theophrastus (Hill's trans- 
 lation) : " There was in the temple of Jupiter an obelisk 
 composed of four emeralds." 
 
 'In spite of your "sound information,'' you confuse jade, 
 which is a nephrite of a green brown colour, and which comes 
 from China, with jasper, a variety of quartz which is found in 
 Europe and Sicily. 
 
 ' If you had chanced to have opened the Dictionary of the 
 French Academy at the word jasper, you would have learned, 
 without going any further, that there were black, red, and 
 white varieties. You should then, sir, have controlled the 
 transports of your indomitable spirit, and not have lightly 
 reproached my master and friend Theophile Gauthier, with 
 having lent a woman (in his Romance of a Mummy) green feet, 
 when he gave her white feet. So it is not he, but you, that 
 have made "a ridiculous error." If you had a little less con- 
 tempt for travelling, you might have seen in the Museum of 
 Turin the very arm of this mummy, brought back from Egypt 
 by M. Passalacqua, and in the position, which Theophile 
 Gauthier describes, that position, which, according to you, is 
 certainly not Egyptian. Without being an engineer either, you 
 might have learned what the sakieh are to supply the houses 
 with water, and you would have been convinced that I have not 
 made an unjustifiable use of black garments in putting them in 
 countries, where they swarm, and where the women of the 
 upper classes never go out except in black veils. But as you 
 prefer written evidence, I recommend to your notice, for all that 
 concerns the clothing of the women, Isaiah iii. 3, the Mischna 
 under Sabbatho, Samuel xiii. 1 8, Clement of Alexandria, part 
 ii. 13, and the dissertations of Abbe Mignot in the Memoires 
 de I' Academie des Inscriptions, xlvi. And as for that super-
 
 216 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 abundance of ornamentation, which astounds you so much, I 
 had every right to lavish it upon peoples who encrusted 
 precious stones in the floors of their rooms (Cahen, Ezekiel xxviii. 
 1 4). But you are not happy in the matter of precious stones. 
 
 ' I conclude, sir, with thanking you for the well-bred forms 
 which you have employed, a rare thing nowadays. Among 
 your inaccuracies I have only noticed the grossest, those which 
 touched on special points. As for the vague criticisms, the 
 personal applications, and the literary review of my book, I 
 have not even alluded to them. I have restricted myself the 
 whole time to your own field, that of science ; and I repeat to 
 you once again, that I am but moderately sound in that. I 
 neither know Hebrew, nor Arabic, nor German, nor Greek, nor 
 Latin, and I do not pride myself on my knowledge of French. 
 I have often used translations, but sometimes also the originals. 
 I have consulted in my times of doubt the men who pass for 
 being the most competent in France, and if I " have not been 
 better guided," the reason is that I had not the honour, the 
 advantage of knowing you. Excuse me ! if I had taken advice 
 from you should I have "succeeded better".'' I doubt it. In 
 any case, I should have lost some signs of goodwill which you 
 bestow on me here and there in your article, and I should have 
 spared you the kind of remorse with which it concludes. But 
 comfort yourself, sir ! although you seem terrified at your own 
 force, and you think seriously " you have cut up my book bit by 
 bit," do not be afraid, calm yourself ! For you have not been 
 cruel, but . . . trivial. — I have the honour to be, etc., 
 
 ' GusTAVE Flaubert.' 
 
 A romance that needs to be defended in this style is at 
 once condemned as a romance. It may be a very learned 
 work, and a conscientious work, but it cannot be one of those 
 works of deep human interest which arrest the attention 
 even of the unlearned. As the ♦S'^. Anthony is spoiled by 
 the processions of strange monsters, and little known divini- 
 ties, so Salammho fails to be effective by the very prodigality 
 of the accurate details which are lavished upon the picture ; 
 and these details are mostly concerned with the material
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 217 
 
 surroundings of the characters. Some of the descriptions 
 are not overloaded for the effect intended, such, for instance, 
 as the description of Hamilcar"'s palace and treasures, of the 
 temples of Tanit and Moloch, of the defeat of Hanno ; but 
 we soon weary of such Avriting as this : — 
 
 'The Carthaginians were still in the first panic of their arrival, 
 when they perceived, coming straight towards them like mon- 
 sters, and like buildings, with their masts, their arms, their 
 coi-ds, their articulations, their capitals, and their carapaces, the 
 siege machines, which were sent by the Tyrian towns, sixty 
 carrobalistse, eighty onagri, thirty scorpions, fifty tolenones, 
 twelve battering-i-ams, and three gigantic catapults, which 
 hurled pieces of rock weighing fifteen talents. Masses of men 
 pushed them on, hooked on to their bases ; at each step a 
 shudder shook them ; thus they came up to the front of the 
 walls.' 
 
 From the antiquarian point of view this is all interesting 
 enough ; but it does not add to our conception of Salammbo 
 or Carthage. In such a work even as Bekker's CharicleSy 
 which professes to illustrate archaeology, these minute descrip- 
 tions of material appliances are relegated to the notes. There 
 is nothing lyrical in long categories of jewels, coins, plants, 
 arms, perfumes ; nothing artistic in the multiplication of 
 the many-syllabled names of tribes, of whom little is known 
 except that their nasty habits are recorded by Herodotus. 
 
 On the other hand, it must be admitted that we are given 
 a very clear picture of one point in which antiquity differs 
 from the nineteenth century, viz., in the indifference to 
 physical suffering, to butchery, to general noisomeness. 
 Flaubert is merciless in this particular ; pools of blood, 
 gobbets of flesh, the circumambient entrails of wounded 
 elephants, Hanno's leprosy, and still more loathsome pallia- 
 tives of that leprosy, pestiferous stinks, putrefaction, assail 
 us on every opportunity. This multiplication of horrors
 
 218 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 amounts to nothing in the end, and eventually affects the 
 reader no more than the gory pictures painted outside a 
 show at a fair ; yet for all this Flaubert was provided with 
 chapter and verse. The only fine conception in the book, 
 which is adequately and not redundantly treated, is the love- 
 sickness of Matho ; and that is an invention. 
 
 Strange irony ! Flaubert thought when he wrote this 
 book that he was giving the rein to his imagination, his 
 friends thought he was developing his lyrical tendency ; in 
 fact, he was enjoying an orgy of antiquarian erudition. 
 
 The historian may read Salammbo with profit, the student 
 with interest, but the book remains a monumental scare- 
 crow ; a warning as to how a historical romance should not 
 be written. 
 
 In connection with the repulsive descriptions in Salammbo 
 there arises the question as to whether wounds and gore and 
 evil smells affected Flaubert as they aff*ect the generality of 
 men. Most probably not. We have seen that when quite 
 a child he was in the habit of watching his father at work in 
 the dissecting-room through a window. A surgeon''s house- 
 hold is the last place in which squeamishness is encouraged. 
 Flaubert describes during his Breton tour the aspect of a 
 slaughter-house, enthusiastically ; at Jerusalem he was fasci- 
 nated by the place of slaughtering in the street. In measur- 
 ing his artistic blunder, we must judge him from his own 
 point of view ; these things were not horrible or repellent to 
 him ; and he did not believe that they could genuinely be so 
 to others. 
 
 More than this, Flaubert was a fanatical worshipper of 
 truth ; he could not gloss over, conceal. He was of opinion 
 that mankind, as a rule, deceive themselves deliberately ; 
 avert their eyes from what is disagreeable, inconsistent with 
 their prejudices. We have seen the scrupulous minuteness
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 219 
 
 with which he sought authority for every statement which he 
 makes. The result is, however, not a work of art, but a 
 scientific document, whose scientific value is to most readers 
 non-existent, because it appears in the form of a work of 
 fiction. 
 
 Here again, by a strange irony, Flaubert is a flagrant 
 sinner against his own rules ; for what has truth to do with 
 those works of art which have no subject ? whose words are 
 a succession of melodious sounds affecting mankind by their 
 beauty, and their beauty only ? 
 
 In holding a brief for truth, as he understood it, and in 
 destroying the beauty of his works by descriptions of things 
 which to ordinary men and women are nauseous even more 
 than ugly, he was as much guilty of writing romances with a 
 purpose as Xavier de Maistre or Walter Besant. 
 
 Guy de Maupassant has asked whether Carthage really 
 was as Flaubert described it, and decided in the negative — 
 why ? Probably because it is impossible to imagine human 
 beings existing under the conditions that Flaubert describes ; 
 but were they so very much worse than the condition of the 
 Netherlands under Alva ?
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 I.' ' 
 
 THE ' EDUCATION SENTIMENTALE LETTERS TO TWO LADIES 
 
 RELIGION 
 
 It is often pleasant to turn from Flaubert the author to 
 Flaubert the man. After the publication of Salammbo his 
 society was even more sought after than when Madame Bovary 
 had startled Paris. He used to spend a few months in the 
 winter in the capital, charming by his expansive good-nature, 
 his apparently inexhaustible animal spirits, astounding by his 
 erudition ; everywhere preaching the gospel of art for art's 
 sake. He became a friend of the Priiicesse Mathilde, and 
 was even invited to Fontainebleau, where, some one having 
 spoken contemptuously of Victor Hugo, he was with diffi- 
 culty prevented from reciting Les Chdtiments in the pre- 
 sence of the Empress. He became a friend of the brothers 
 De Goncourt, of Daudet, of Zola, of Turgenieff. He fre- 
 quented the theatres, studied actors and actresses behind 
 the scenes, in whom he discovered something peculiarly and 
 irresistibly comic. Needless to say that work went on as 
 usual. After finishing Salammbo he again picked up St. 
 Anthony, and again put it reluctantly aside. Then he 
 worked for a while at a fairy piece of a perfectly novel 
 construction, in which all metaphors were suddenly to be 
 embodied in visible shape on the stage. How this was to be 
 managed is not quite apparent ; and as the same difficulty 
 suggested itself to theatrical managers the fairy piece was 
 never performed or published. 
 
 220
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 221 
 
 At last Flaubert fell back upon another youthful effort, 
 which, like the St. Antoine, had been consigned to his port- 
 folios. It was called the Education Sentiment ale, and the 
 original story was suggested by his own platonic adoration 
 of a married woman whom he had met first at Trouville 
 when he was only a lad of fourteen. From this experience 
 he deduced a theory of disillusionment in the matter of love, 
 of a degradation of the ideal ; but men do not only live 
 through their conceptions of love, they also live through 
 their ideal conceptions of every kind ; their political faiths, 
 their ambitions, give way to wider knowledge of life and of 
 themselves ; they are often deceived at the outset in their 
 very conception of themselves, mistake a love of notoriety 
 for patriotism, taste for idle gossip for political activity ; 
 congratulate themselves on their originality when they emit 
 or swallow ready-made phrases. To illustrate these views 
 Flaubert wrote a book, which has little of the original 
 Education Sentimentale except the name ; he worked at it 
 for six years with the same minute conscientiousness in 
 matters of detail that he had expended upon Salammho. 
 The period selected for the story is that immediately pre- 
 ceding and following the Revolution of "'48 ; and the possible 
 environment of the personages at that epoch was most 
 carefully worked out. If his characters have to go to Fon- 
 tainebleau, Flaubert must ascertain exactly how they would 
 be able to travel, whether the railway was open as far as 
 Corbeil, and so forth. Details of the fighting in the streets 
 in '48 were gathered from eye-witnesses ; the conversations 
 of the period are reproduced in the style of the literature 
 current at the time ; even the newspapers, so antipathetic to 
 Flaubert's own tastes, were carefully exploited. 
 
 Among his correspondents at this time are two ladies, 
 one of whom. Mademoiselle Leroyer de Chantepie, he never
 
 222 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 saw ; she is the lady who wrote to him on the pubhcation 
 of Madame Bovary ; the other, Madame Roger des Genettes, 
 who died in January 1891, was the granddaughter of the 
 Girondin Valaze ; her husband and cousin, Charles Roger 
 des Genettes, was descended from one of the eminent mili- 
 tary medical men of the first Empire ; she herself lived in 
 contact with the most brilliant figures in Parisian literary 
 society. In this correspondence Flaubert reveals qualities 
 which were not suspected by the male friends of the noisy 
 giant, who used to howl verses in the heat of controversy, 
 and bang the table till the glasses jingled. While the 
 ethical views expressed in these letters are in accordance 
 with the known facts of his life, on the other hand, much of 
 their philosophy is also to be found in the Saint Antoine ; 
 thus these letters are to some extent a bridge connectina; his 
 private with his artistic life. 
 
 TO MLLE LEKOYER DE CHANTEPIE. 
 
 'Paris, March 18, '57. 
 
 ' , . . With such and so sympathetic a reader as you, madam, 
 frankness is a duty ; so I am going to answer your questions. 
 There is no real fact in Madame Bovarij ; the story is entirely 
 invented ; I have not put into it either my own sentiments or 
 any of my own existence. On the contrary, the illusion (if 
 there is any) comes from the impersonality of the work. It is 
 one of my principles that the author should not describe him- 
 self. The artist should be in his work, like God in creation, 
 invisible and all-powerful ; he should be felt everywhere, and 
 seen nowhere. And then art should be raised above personal 
 affections and nervous susceptibilities. It is time to give it the 
 precision of the physical sciences by means of pitiless method. 
 For me the capital difficulty none the less continues to be 
 style, form, the indefinable beauty, which is the result of the 
 conception itself, and which is the splendour of truth, as Plato 
 used to say.' 
 
 'Croisset, Mai/ 18, '57. 
 
 ' . . . You ask me how I cured myself of the nervous halluci-
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 223 
 
 nations from which I formerly suffered ? In two ways : (1) by 
 studying them scientifically, that is to say, by trying to under- 
 stand them ; and (2) by force of will. I have often felt 
 insanity coming upon me. There was a whirl of ideas and 
 images in my poor brain, in which my consciousness, my me, 
 seemed to founder like a ship beneath a storm. But I clung 
 desperately to my reason. It prevailed over everything, though 
 besieged and beaten upon. At other times I used to try by 
 means of imagination to give myself these horrible sufferings 
 factitiously. I have played with madness and fantasy like 
 Mithridates with the poisons. I was sustained by a mighty 
 pride, and I conquered the mischief by wrestling with it, body 
 to body. 
 
 ' There is a sentiment, or rather a habit, in which you seem to 
 me to be wanting, to wit, the love of co7itemplatio7i. Take life, 
 the passions, and yourself, as a subject for intellectual exercise ; 
 you revolt against the injustice of the world, its baseness, its 
 tyranny, and all the turpitude and nauseousness of existence. 
 But do you kfwtv these things thoroughly } Have you studied 
 everything .^ Are you God .'' Who tells you that your human 
 judgment is infallible .'' that your sentiments do not deceive 
 you ? How can we, with our limited senses and our finite 
 intelligence, reach an absolute knowledge of the true and the 
 good ? Shall we ever grasp the infinite ? If one wishes to live, 
 one must renounce the notion of having a clear conception of 
 anything whatever. Humanity is so ; our business is not to 
 change it, but to know it. 
 
 ' . . . I take an example : you are much concerned about the 
 injustices of this world, about socialism, about politics. Let it 
 be so ! Well, first read all those who have had the same ambi- 
 tions as yourself; search the Utopians and the dry thinkers. 
 And then, before allowing yourself a final opinion, you will have 
 to study a somewhat modern science which is much talked of, 
 but little cultivated ; I mean Political Economy. You will be 
 astounded to find yourself change your opinions from day to 
 day as a man changes his shirt. Never mind ! There will be 
 no bitterness in your scepticism, for you sit, as it were, at the 
 comedy of Humanity, and History will seem to have passed 
 over the world for you alone.
 
 224 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' Trivial people^ limited people, presumptuous and enthusiastic 
 minds, want to have a conclusion in everything; they seek for 
 the aim of life and the dimensions of infinity. They take a 
 handful of sand in their poor little fists and say to the ocean, " I 
 am going to count the grains on thy shores." But as the grains 
 slip between their fingers, and the calculation is long, they 
 stamp and cry. Do you know what one should do on the sea- 
 shore ? Kneel or walk. Do you walk ! 
 
 ' No great genius has concluded, and no great book ends, 
 because humanity itself is always on the mai'ch, and does not 
 conclude. There is no conclusion in Homer, nor in Shake- 
 speare, nor in Goethe, nor in the Bible itself. And so the 
 fashionable phrase, " social problem," is to me extremely revolt- 
 ing. The day on which it is solved will be the last of the 
 planet. Life is an eternal problem, and history too, and every- 
 thing. Figures are being perpetually added to the addition 
 sum. How many spokes can you count in a revolving wheel ? 
 The nineteenth century, in the pride of its emancipation, 
 believes itself to have discovered the sun. For example, it 
 is said that the Reformation was the preparation for the French 
 Revolution. That would be true if everything had been going 
 to stop at that point, but this Revolution is itself the prepara- 
 tion for another condition ; and so on, and so on. Our most 
 advanced ideas will seem very ridiculous, and very backward, 
 when we look at them over our shoulders. I bet that in as 
 little as fifty years the phrases, social problem, moralisation 
 of the masses, progress, and democracy, will have passed 
 into the condition of lumber, and will seem as grotesque as 
 those of sensibility, nature, predestined and gentle affinities, 
 so much in fashion at the end of the eighteenth century. 
 
 ' It is because I believe in the perpetual evolution of humanity 
 and its ever-changing forms that I hate all the frames into 
 which people try to stuff it by force, all the formalities with 
 which it is circumscribed, the plans that are dreamed of on its 
 behalf. Democracy is no more its last word than slavery has 
 been, than feudalism, than monarchy. The horizon perceived 
 by human eyes is never the shore, because beyond this horizon 
 there is another, and so on for ever ! Thus to me it seems a 
 silly form of insanity to seek for the best of religions, or the
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 225 
 
 best of governments. The best, so far as I am concerned, is 
 the one which is on its deathbed, because it is making room for 
 another. 
 
 ' I owe you a bit of a grudge for having said to me in one of 
 your preceding letters that you wished for " compulsory educa- 
 tion " for everybody. For my part, I abominate everything 
 that is compulsory, every law, all government, all rule. Who 
 are you, pray, O Society, to force me to anything.^ What 
 God made you my master } Observe that you fall back into 
 the old injustices of the past. The individual will no longer be 
 oppressed by a despot, but by the crowd, the public benefit, the 
 eternal " reasons of state," that phrase of all peoples, the maxim 
 of Robespierre. I prefer the desert ; I return to the Bedouins, 
 who are free. . . .' 
 
 These divagations are followed by a thoughtful review of 
 some Mss, which Mademoiselle Leroyer de Chantepie had 
 sent. 
 
 The following extract from a letter written at this time 
 to Ernest Feydeau, who seems from other evidence to have 
 been a person of a somewhat amusing, excessive vanity, 
 gives an illustration of Flauberfs conception of the claims 
 of friendship : — 
 
 ' No, my dear sir, I have never perpetrated any meanness in 
 relation to you, even by gesture ; and befoi-e treating a man as 
 a sneak, you should have proofs. I think this assumption gra- 
 tuitous, and in the worst possible taste, my good fellow. I 
 never allow anybody to run down my friends in my presence (it 
 is a privilege that I reserve to myself). They belong to me : I 
 allow no one to touch them. For the rest, cheer up ! Your 
 enemy, Aubryet, spoke no evil of your Lordship to me. I 
 only saw him for about twenty minutes. As soon as dinner 
 was finished he went on board. There — and you are an imper- 
 tinent fellow. 
 
 ' Your bad opinion of me comes from the fact that one day 
 I did not take your side in an argument. The fact is that I 
 thought you both equally ridiculous, and the meanness would 
 have been to support theories that were not mine. 
 
 p
 
 226 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' You shall pay me for all these insults in the review that I 
 propose to write on your ilte, big lunatic ! Meanwhile you 
 may boast of having written a certain seventeenth chapter, 
 which is a gem.' 
 
 The letter ends humorously enough, but apparently did 
 not satisfy the outraged Feydeau, for we have another, 
 which begins as follows : — 
 
 ' My good fellow, I think it is always a proper thing to wash 
 one's dirty linen. Now I wash mine straight off. I did owe you 
 a grudge, and I still owe you a bit of a grudge for having sup- 
 posed that I said anything evil of your person or your works 
 with Aubryet. I am now speaking very seriously. It shocked 
 me, wounded me. That is the way I am made. Know that 
 that particular form of meanness is completely antipathetic to 
 me. I never allow anybody to say more evil to me of my 
 friends than I am in the habit of saying to their faces. And 
 when a stranger opens his mouth to abuse one of them, I 
 promptly close it for him. The contrary proceeding is very 
 fashionable, as I know, but it is no custom of mine. Let there 
 be no further talk about it, and if you don't understand me, so 
 much the worse for you. Let us talk of less serious things, and 
 do me the honour for the futui'e not to judge of me as of the 
 first person you meet. 
 
 ' Know besides, O Feydeau, that I never humbug. There is 
 no more serious animal in the world than myself. I laugh 
 sometimes, but joke very little, and less now than ever.' 
 
 Feydeau must have given occasion to many amusing scenes 
 when in Flauberfs society. For example : — 
 
 ' Why do you persist in torturing my nei'ves by maintaining 
 against me that a plot of cabbages is more beautiful than the 
 desert } You will pennit me to beg you first to go and see the 
 desert before talking about it. But in this preference given to 
 the vulgar vegetable I can only see a desire to make me furious.' 
 
 Mademoiselle Leroyer de Chantepie could stir a gentler 
 
 mood : — 
 
 ' Have you noticed how we love our sufferings .'' You cling
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 227 
 
 to your religious ideas, which cause you so much pain, and I to 
 my chimera of style, which wears me out body and soul. But 
 perhaps it is only by our sufferings that we are worth any- 
 thing, for they are, after all, aspirations. There are so many 
 people whose pleasures are so filthy, and ideal so limited, 
 that we ought to bless our misfortunes if they make us more 
 worthy. . . . Yes, one should read Spinoza. The people who 
 accuse him of atheism are donkeys. Goethe used to say : 
 " When I feel worried I read the Ethics (of Spinoza) over again." 
 You will perhaps have the good fortune, like Goethe, to be 
 calmed by this grand reading. I lost ten years ago the man 
 whom I loved best in the world, Alfred Lepoittevin. In his 
 last illness he spent his nights reading Spinoza. 
 
 'I have never known anybody (and I know a good many 
 people) of so transcendental a mind as this friend of whom I 
 tell you. We used sometimes to spend six continuous hours 
 talking metaphysics. We have been high, I assure you. Since 
 his death I converse with hardly any one ; I chatter, or I hold 
 my tongue. Alas ! what a city of the dead is the human heart ! 
 Why go to the cemeteries } Let us open our reminiscences, 
 how many tombs ! 
 
 ' How was your youth spent ? Mine was vei'y beautiful in- 
 wardly. I had enthusiasms which I now seek for in vain ; 
 friends, alas ! who are dead or changed. A great confidence in 
 myself, splendid leaps of the soul, something impetuous in my 
 whole personality. I dreamed of love, glory, beauty. My heart 
 was as wide as the world, and I breathed all the winds of 
 heaven. And then gradually I have grown callous, tarnished. 
 No ! I accuse nobody but myself ! I sank myself in absurd 
 sentimental gymnastics. I took a pleasure in fighting my 
 senses, and in torturing my heart. I repelled the human in- 
 toxications which were offered me. Furious with myself, I 
 uprooted the man with both my hands, two hands full of pride 
 and strength. I wished to make of that tree with verdant 
 foliage a bare column to place on its summit, as on an altar, I 
 know not what divine flame. . . . That is why I find myself at 
 six-and- thirty so empty, and at times so fatigued ! Is not this 
 story of mine that I tell you a little like your own } '
 
 228 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 Early in 1858 a letter to Madame Roger des Genettes con- 
 tains the following passage : — 
 
 ' The manner in which all religions talk of God revolts me ; 
 they treat Him with so much certainty, levity, familiarity. 
 The priests, who have this name always on their lips, irritate 
 me above all. It is with them a kind of chronic sneeze — "the 
 goodness of God, the wrath of God, to offend God," these are 
 their phrases. It is considering Him as if He were a man, and, 
 what 's worse, a middle-class man. They are further wild to 
 decorate Him with attributes, as savages put feathers on their 
 fetish. Some paint infinity blue, others black. Utter savagery 
 all that. We are still cropping the grass, and walking on all- 
 fours in spite of balloons. The ideal that humanity forms for 
 itself of God does not go beyond that of an Oriental monarch 
 surrounded by his court. The religious ideal is, in fact, several 
 centuries behind the social ideal, and there are heaps of 
 mountebanks who make a pretence of falling down faint with 
 admiration in its presence.' 
 
 Mademoiselle Leroyer de Chantepie was by way of being 
 an authoress, and Flaubert took pains to find suitable books 
 for her to read, to criticise what she had already written ; at 
 the same time he would expand in personal confidences ; he 
 liked playing the part of spiritual director ; thus he says, 
 writing on the 26th of December 1858 : — 
 
 ' I seem to forget you ! Nothing of the kind ! My thoughts 
 often travel to you, and I address prayers to the Unknown God 
 of whom St. Paul spoke for the tranquillisation and satisfaction 
 of your heart. You hold in my soul a very high — a very pure 
 place — a wide space ; indeed, you would hardly credit the senti- 
 mental amazement that your first letters caused me. I am in- 
 debted to you for having felt myself at once better and more 
 intelligent because of you.' 
 
 Two months later we have a letter which would have 
 made our old friend Madame Colet rave : — 
 
 * That is a sad story that of the young girl, your relative, who 
 went mad in consequence of religious notions, but it is a com-
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 229 
 
 mon story. One must have a robust constitution to mount on 
 the peaks of mysticism without losing one's head. And then in 
 all that, and especially in the case of women, there ai'e questions 
 of temperament which complicate the malady. Do you not see 
 that they are all in love with Adonis ? What they ask for is 
 the eternal husband. Ascetic or voluptuous, they still dream of 
 love, of the great love ; and to cure them (at any rate tem- 
 porarily) they do not want an idea but a fact, a husband, a 
 child, a lover. To you this seems equivocal. But I was not 
 the inventor of human nature. I am convinced that the most 
 extravagant material appetites are unconsciously formulated by 
 bursts of idealism, in the same way that the most impure ex- 
 travagances of the flesh are engendered by a pure longing for 
 Jthe impossible, an ethereal aspiration after the supreme pleasure. 
 And further, I do not know, and nobody knows, what these two 
 words soul and body mean ; where the one ends and the other 
 begins. We feel forces, and that is all. Materialism and 
 spiritualism still weigh too heavily on the science of man to 
 enable us to study all these phenomena impartially. The 
 anatomy of the human heart has not yet been done. Then 
 how can one cure it } It will be the special glory of the nine- 
 teenth century to have begun these i*esearches. The historic 
 sense is quite new in the world. People are now about begin- 
 ning to study ideas like facts, and to dissect beliefs like 
 organisms. There is a whole school working in the shade, and 
 which will do something, of that I am sure. 
 
 ' Do you read the fine works of Renan } Do you know the 
 books of Lanfrey, of Maury ? 
 
 ' As for me, in these latter days I have incidentally returned 
 to those psycho-medical studies which charmed me so much ten 
 years ago when I was writing my Saint Anthoiiy. In connection 
 with my Salammho, I have occupied myself with hysteria and 
 mental alienation. There are treasures to be discovered in all 
 that. But life is short and art is long, indeed almost impossible 
 when one is writing in a language worn down to the thread, 
 worm-eaten, debilitated, and ci-acking under the finger at every 
 effort. What despairs, what agonies are caused by this love of 
 the beautiful ! For the rest, I have undertaken an unrealisable 
 task. Never mind ! If I make some few noble imaginations
 
 230 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 dream, I shall not have lost my time. 1 am barely yet at the 
 quarter of my work, I have still enough to do for two years.' 
 
 This light thrown on the character of Salammbo is sug- 
 gestive ; without it the reader of the romance of Carthage 
 would hardly have guessed the precise significance which 
 Flaubert attached to the vague yearnings of his heroine, her 
 prayers, her fastings, and religious exaltation. 
 
 Madame Roger des Genettes also consulted her director 
 from time to time, ' the confessor of the ladies of disillusion,"' 
 as he once styled himself in writing to Georges Sand. 
 
 ' Your letter of this morning made me think for a long 
 while. I prefer these truthful cries to efforts to laugh and 
 joke; for you are entirely ignorant of what joy really is. You 
 want that energy, that natural gift. Then weep freely on the 
 heart of your friend ; he will try to wipe away your tears, 
 although he is wounded by your injustice. You say you do not 
 know me any more than a language of which one writes but a 
 few words. And yet what have I concealed from you ? It 
 seems to me that I am naturally open. Nothing is less compli- 
 cated than my mind. But you have been spoiled by the world, 
 and Catholicism. You are full of sophistries, and confused 
 sentiments which prevent you from seeing truth. God had 
 made you better, and it is for that reason that I love you, for 
 you must have suffered horribly, and you suffer still, poor dear 
 friend ! 
 
 ' For my part, I presume to say that I know you ; now in your 
 life and in your soul I catch glimpses of gulfs of weariness and 
 sorrows, a solitude, an eternal Sahara, which you traverse cease- 
 lessly. I know nobody so profoundly sceptical as you are, and 
 you torture yourself in every possible way to believe. I irritate 
 you horribly, and perhaps that is the very reason why you cling 
 to me, I find fault with you for having treated me like any- 
 body else, when I loved you, as nobody will love you. . . . 
 
 '. . . It is however so easy to have a coal-heaver's faith, to 
 admire what is admirable, to laugh at what is funny, to hate 
 the ugly, the false, the obscure, to be, in one word, human, I do
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 231 
 
 not say humanitarian, to read history, and to warm oneself in 
 the sun ! So little is wanted to fill a human soul ! I hear the 
 objection by anticipation ; I see coming up the long row of 
 those who have sung of the insufficiency of earthly life, of the 
 nothingness of science, the natural feebleness of human affec- 
 tions. But are you quite sure of knowing life ? Have you 
 been to the bottom of science ? Are you not too feeble for 
 passion ? Do not let us find fault with alcohol, but with our 
 own digestive organs, or our own intemperance. Who is there 
 among us who imceasingly struggles to bring himself nearer to 
 God without hope of reward, without personal interest, without 
 expectation of profit .'' Who is there who works to be bigger 
 and better, to love more strongly, to feel more intensely, to 
 understand more .''... 
 
 ' . . . You know well that I do not share your opinion of 
 the personality of M. de Voltaire in any way. For me he is a 
 saint. Why persist in seeing a low comedian in a man who was 
 a fanatic .'' M. de Maistre has said of him, in his treatise on 
 sacrifices, " There is no flower in the garden of intellect which 
 has not been defiled by this caterpillar." I can no more forgive 
 M. de Maistre for this phrase than I pardon MM. Stendhal, 
 Veuillot, Proudhon, for all their verdicts. The consumptive, 
 anti-artistic breed is the same. Temperament stands for a good 
 deal in our literary affections. Now I like the great Voltaire 
 as much as I detest the great Rousseau ; and I take the differ- 
 ence in our estimates very much to heart. I am surprised that 
 you do not admire this great pulse, which moved the world. 
 Can such results be obtained by the insincere .'' In this verdict 
 of yours you belong to the school of the eighteenth century 
 which saw in religious enthusiasm only the mummery of priests. 
 Let us bow before all altars. Li short, that particular man 
 seems to me burning, eager, convinced, superb. His " Let us 
 crush the infamous " affects me like the shout of a crusade. 
 His whole intellect was an engine of war. And what makes 
 me particularly fond of him is the disgust with which the 
 Voltairians inspire me ; people who laugh at great things ! 
 Did he laugh — he } He gnashed his teeth. . . ." 
 
 Eight years later Flaubert wrote the following letter to
 
 232 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 Mademoiselle Leroyer de Chantepie, with whom he still 
 maintained an intermittent correspondence : — 
 
 'Paris, June l6, 1867. 
 
 ' The pleasure that it gives me to receive your letters, dear 
 lady, is counterbalanced by the sorrow that is revealed in them. 
 What a fine soul you possess ! and what a dismal existence is 
 yours ! I think I understand it. That is why I love you. 
 
 ' I, like you, have known the intense melancholy which the 
 Angelus brings on summer evenings. Calm as I am on the 
 surface, I too have been ravaged, and — must I say it ? — am still 
 so sometimes. But convinced of this truth, that as soon as a 
 man thinks of himself he is ill, I try to intoxicate myself with 
 art as others do with brandy. By mere strength of will one 
 arrives at losing the notion of one's own personality. Believe 
 me, one is not happy, but one suffers less, 
 
 'No — undeceive yourself! I never scoff at your religious 
 sentiments, not even in the deepest depths of my conscious- 
 ness. All piety attracts me, and Catholic piety above all. But 
 I do not understand the nahire of your doubts. Have they 
 reference to dogma, or to yourself.'' If I understand what you 
 write to me, it seems to me that you feel yourself iniivorthy. 
 Then be comforted, for you sin by excess of humility, which is 
 a great virtue. Unworthy ! Why } Poor dear sorrowing soul 
 that you are ! Take heart. Your God is good, and you have 
 suffered enough to make Him love you. But if you have doubts 
 of the very foundations of religion (and this is what I believe, 
 whatever you may say), why distress yourself about failing in 
 duties which then cease to be duties ? Suppose a sincere 
 Catholic to turn Mussulman (for one motive or another) ; that is 
 a crime in the eyes of religion, as in those of philosophy ; but 
 if this Catholic is not a believer, his change of religion has no 
 more importance than a change of coat. Everything depends 
 upon the value which we assign to things. We ourselves make 
 morality and virtue. The cannibal, who eats his fellow, is as 
 innocent as the child who sucks his barley-sugar. Why then 
 afflict yourself at not being able to confess or to communicate, 
 since you cannot ? From the moment that this duty is no 
 longer practicable it ceases to be a duty. But no ! The
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 233 
 
 admiration that you evince for Jean Reynaud proves to me that 
 you are full in the current of contemporary criticism, and yet 
 you cling by inclination, by habit, and by your personal nature 
 to the beliefs of the past. If you wish to get out of this diffi- 
 culty, I repeat to you, you must take a line ; resolutely fling 
 yourself upon the one or the other. Be with Saint Theresa or 
 Voltaire. Whatever people may say, there is no mean term, 
 
 ' Humanity at the present day is exactly like you. The 
 blood of the Middle Ages still pulses in its veins, and it 
 pants for the mighty air of future centuries, which only bring 
 it storms. 
 
 'And all that because one insists on a solution. Oh, pride 
 of man ! A solution ! The end ! The Cause ! But we should 
 be God if we held the cause, and the further we go the further 
 it will retire, infinitely, because our horizon will widen. The 
 more perfect the telescopes, the more numerous the stars. We 
 are condemned to roll in darkness and tears. 
 
 ' When I look at one of those little stars in the Milky Way, I 
 say to myself that the earth is no bigger than one of those 
 sparks. And I, who gravitate for a moment upon that spark, 
 who am I ? What are we ? This sentiment of my lowness, of 
 my insignificance, comforts me. I seem to have become a grain 
 of dust lost in space, and yet I form a pai*t of the unlimited 
 greatness which enfolds me. I have never understood that 
 that could be a despairing idea ; for it might well be, that 
 behind the black curtain there was nothing. The infinite, for 
 the rest, sinks all our conceptions, and from the moment that 
 it is, why should there be an end for so relative a thing as our- 
 selves ? 
 
 * Imagine a man who, with balances a thousand cubits high, 
 should wish to weigh the sand of the sea. When he had filled 
 his two scales they would overflow, and his work would be no 
 further advanced than at the beginning. 
 
 ' All the philosophies are at that point. They may say, if they 
 please, "Still there is a weight, there is a certain figure which 
 we should know, let us try," the scales are magnified, the rope 
 breaks, and always, always so ! Then be more Chiistian, and 
 resign yourself to ignorance. You ask me what books to read. 
 Read Montaigne ; read him slowly, steadily. He will calm you.
 
 234 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 And do not listen to people who talk of his egotism. You will 
 like him, you will see. But do not read, as the children read, 
 to amuse yourself, nor as ambitious people read, to get in- 
 struction. No ! read to live ! Make an intellectual atmosphere 
 for your soul, which shall be composed of the emanation of all 
 the great minds. Study Shakespeare and Goethe thoroughly. 
 Read translations of the Greek and Roman authors, — Homer, 
 Petronius, Plautus, Apuleius, etc. And when something bores 
 you, fling yourself into it, you will soon understand it. That 
 will be a satisfaction for you. It is a question of working, do 
 you understand me } I do not like seeing a nature so fine as 
 yours engulfed in vexation and idleness. Widen your horizon, 
 and you will breathe more freely. If you were a man, and 
 were only twenty years old, I would advise you to travel round 
 the world. Well — make the tour of the world in your own 
 room ! Study a thing that you have no suspicion of — the 
 World ! But I recommend you Montaigne before everything 
 else. Read him from one end to the other, and when you have 
 got to the end, begin again. The advice (doctor's advice 
 doubtless) that is given to you seems to me unintelligent. You 
 must, on the contrary, fatigue your thought. Do not believe 
 that it is worn out. It is not from cramp that it is suffering, but 
 from convulsions. These folk for the rest understand nothing 
 of the soul. I know them, — there !" 
 
 Flaubert never met Mademoiselle Leroyer de Chantepie. 
 If he had done so, what then ? To us she appears, through 
 his letters, a somewhat vaporous and sentimental female, who 
 hooked herself on to the author of Madame Bovary^ touched 
 the string of tenderness in him, and was initiated, as a reward, 
 into mysteries beyond her comprehension. Whether she was 
 comforted in the contemplation of her own nothingness is 
 open to doubt ; but, for all that, Flaubert's position with 
 regard to religion is an essentially sound one. What we are 
 concerned with is the rules which regulate the infinitely little 
 corner of space in which we live, our own immediate sur- 
 roundings. Philosophers may define God and the Infinite
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 235 
 
 as they please, none the less we have to eat our three square 
 meals a day, and accommodate ourselves to the convictions 
 of those around us ; if we cannot fit to the measure of our 
 neighbours, the only comfort to be found is in intellectually 
 testing it, and rising above it. To be irritated at it is 
 essentially feeble; the motives which impel the different 
 individuals who form the society in which we perforce live 
 are by us unalterable ; then let us understand them ; and to 
 understand them we must study in considerable detail our 
 own little corner of space. We may arrive at the conclusion 
 at which Flaubert arrived, that though the basis of morality 
 is not demonstrably supernatural, the necessity of morality 
 in civilised society is inevitable. 
 
 It is, in fact, not possible to construct any ethical system 
 whereby it could be demonstrated to the common man that, 
 from a self-regarding point of view, it is to his advantage to 
 deny himself the gratification of his passions, except in cases 
 in which his bodily health is immediately affected ; and the 
 association of morality with supernatural sanctions is simply 
 a statement of this fact ; on the other hand, that human 
 society is impossible where the individual emancipates him- 
 self from self-denial and self-control, is equally obvious. 
 Therefore the man who refuses the supernatural sanction is 
 none the less bound to accept the moral restraints imposed 
 by the conditions of the society in which he lives. He 
 wastes his time if he battles with them ; he is apt to be 
 martyred if he makes war upon the creed with which they 
 are supposed to be inextricably involved. 
 
 The man who makes himself miserable because he cannot 
 accept the religious convictions of his neighbour is intellec- 
 tually absurd ; for he must either know more, in which case 
 he should congratulate himself, or feel himself below these 
 convictions, in which case he should study them, live up to
 
 236 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 them ; he still has an ambition and a standard. The one 
 point on which Flaubert only lightly touched — the hold that 
 the outward practices enjoined by religion still maintain 
 upon the person who has begun to apply criticism to them — 
 is after all the real practical difficulty. At the bottom it is 
 not the loss of faith which the sceptically-minded person 
 regrets, it is the companionship of the human beings to 
 whom he has been accustomed. Intellectually it was quite 
 correct to say that the sorrows of the sceptic arise from not 
 going far enough, from trying to halt between St. Theresa 
 and Voltaire ; that the student of humanity, the man who 
 does not set himself to build up an ideal of what men should 
 be, but who fearlessly tries to find out what man is, has no 
 further need to vex himself with his own shortcomings in 
 the matter of religious conviction. But this intellectual 
 wellbeing will not comfort the son who finds that between 
 himself and a dearly loved mother a wall has grown up, that 
 a whole world of sympathies which they shared has become 
 on his side a region which is entered with conscious conces- 
 sion to weakness ; worse than all, that she cannot accept the 
 concession, Flaubert himself was never called upon to 
 grapple with this particular trouble, and for that reason he 
 unden-ates its magnitude in all its varieties. Nor had he any 
 experience of the terrible isolation of the dissident. It is 
 from this that the majority of sceptical souls shrink. The 
 long process by which the savage has been tamed into the 
 civilised or civilisable man has left its impress upon each 
 individual in many ways ; the dread of solitariness is part of 
 the price which the individual has to pay for the comfort 
 of society, 
 
 Flaubert never attempted to construct a system ; his 
 letters were not written for publication, and those who 
 endeavour to find a system in them, or construct a system
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 237 
 
 out of them, will be wofuUy disappointed. On the other 
 hand, it is good to know how he expressed himself intimately 
 on the questions of faith and creed, if only as a contradiction 
 to the prevalent assumption that a person who intellectually 
 rejects a creed necessarily quarrels with it or scoffs at it. 
 There is a reverent revolt as well as an irreverent rejection ; 
 and it is possible to acknowledge with all humility that the 
 religious attitude ' makes for righteousness "* ; also to feel that 
 the mere scoffer is infinitely contemptible, though the per- 
 sonality of particular upholders of this or that dogma may 
 be open to ridicule, and even to stronger condemnation. 
 When Napoleon iii. took religion under his protection the 
 bitter speech Avas inevitable ; but it was not religion that 
 was the object of Flaubert's mockery, rather those mean- 
 spirited officials of religion who could accept for their faith 
 the patronage of a Louis Napoleon. 
 
 Flauberfs intellectual position on religious questions is 
 clearly seen in the St. Anthony ; his estimate of the scoffer 
 in the person of Homais ; while the Abbe Bournisien, in 
 spite of his mental incapacity, is one of the very few char- 
 acters in Madame Bovary whom one is disposed to respect.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 DEATH OF LOUIS BOUILHET HIS AUTISTIC IDEALS FLAUBERt's 
 
 LETTER TO THE TOWN COUNCIL OF ROUEN 
 
 In 1869 Flaubert suffered a great loss, Louis Bouilhet died 
 on the 18th July. In the annals of friendship it is not easy 
 to find a pair who were so closely united as these two men. 
 Both had other friends, women as well as men, but the tie 
 which bound them was never strained by jealousy or 
 weakened by diffusion of affection. 
 
 There are comparatively few letters to Bouilhet ; for many 
 years the friends met regularly once a Aveek, and the periods 
 during which they were separated were not of long duration. 
 
 For Bouilhet Flaubert would do what he would not do for 
 himself, — assail publishers, storm theatres, placard advertise- 
 ments ; when ' Madame de Montarcy "* was produced at the 
 Odeon, Flaubert simply took possession of the stage, the 
 actors, the box-office, the attendants in the theatre ; at the 
 rehearsals he carried all before him in a whirlwind of flying 
 dressing-gown ; and after the poet's death he broke out of 
 his literary seclusion to superintend in the same way the 
 production of 'Mademoiselle Aisse.'' On the other hand, 
 Louis Bouilhet was, as we have seen, the one person who 
 could repress Flauberfs literary extravagances, and who did 
 so ; he was the one critic whose censures and corrections 
 Flaubert accepted without subsecjuent resentment. He often 
 fought against them at the time, raved, howled, entreated, 
 
 238
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 239 
 
 implored, but Bouilhet was immovable ; and when Flaubert 
 had once submitted to him, he kept faith. 
 
 The following touching sentence in a letter written to 
 Jules Duplan just after Bouilhet's death, and whose sub- 
 stance is often repeated in the correspondence, sufficiently 
 indicates the strength and the nature of the union between 
 these two men : — 
 
 ' Your poor giant has suffered a rude buffet, from which he 
 will not recover. I say to myself, ' Why write now, since he is 
 no longer there ? ' It is all over : those good bouts of howling 
 verses, the enthusiasms in common, the future works dreamed 
 of together. One should be "philosophical and a man of in- 
 tellect" ; but it is not easy.' 
 
 As usual on the death of an intimate friend, Flaubert 
 wrote to Maxime Ducamp ; one passage in the letter re- 
 minds us again of the grotesque, which ever waited on 
 Flaubert : — 
 
 ' From Paris to Rouen in a carriage full of people. I had 
 opposite me a damsel who smoked cigarettes, stretched her feet 
 on the seat, and sang. On seeing the steeples of Mantes again 
 (where Bouilhet had lived for some time) I thought I was going 
 mad, and I am sure I was not far from it. Seeing me very pale, 
 the young lady offered me eau-de-Cologne. That revived me, 
 but what a thirst ! That in the desert of Qoseir was nothing 
 in comparison.' 
 
 Maxime Ducamp in his Literary Reminiscences somewhat 
 disparages the friendship between Flaubert and Bouilhet, 
 suggests that the friends injured one another by their mutual 
 admiration ; each would have done more had it not been for 
 the friend, and so forth ; this too at the same time that he 
 praises the rigour with which Bouilhet lopped off Flaubert's 
 excrescences. It is difficult to determine in such cases the 
 exact nature of the influence exercised by a pair of friends 
 upon one another ; for this influence is certainly not limited
 
 240 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 to mutual criticism ; there is also the stimulus of the wish 
 to please the friend, to justify his affection by adequate 
 performance. Bouilhet, though bold enough with his pen, 
 was deficient in self-assurance, easily disconcerted by pub- 
 lishers and theatrical managers ; Flaubert found courage for 
 him ; pushed him where he would not push himself; eventu- 
 ally secured his election as librarian at Rouen, in the hope 
 that financial ease might give him a fair opportunity of put- 
 ting forth all his power. Unfortunately the well-meant gift 
 came too late : the poet was already stricken with the ener- 
 vating malady which killed him. Of the intimate nature of 
 the friendship between the two men, the depth of their affec- 
 tion for one another, there is abundant evidence ; Flauberfs 
 few published letters to Bouilhet are written with a spon- 
 taneity which distinguishes them even in his unreserved cor- 
 respondence. There is a certainty of comprehension in them 
 which there is not always m his letters. Outwardly, in spite 
 of the great difference in manner — Flaubert noisy, impetuous, 
 Bouilhet shrinking, reserved, — there was a strong personal 
 resemblance between the friends ; they were frequently taken 
 for brothers. 
 
 It is further more difficult for an Englishman than a 
 Frenchman to estimate Flauberfs literary influence upon 
 Bouilhet, for Bouilhet wrote nothing but verse, and the 
 mystery of the melody of French poetry is to Englishmen a 
 sealed book ; few Englishmen can even hear the distinctions 
 between French vowel-sounds, and it is in their skilful com- 
 bination that the merit of a French poem is said to consist. 
 On the other hand, in spite of Maxime Ducamp's praise of 
 Bouilhefs rigid censure of the superabundant in Flaubert, 
 it was not till after the death of Bouilhet that the three short 
 stories were written in which this particular defect is absent, 
 while the Education Sentimentule in which Ducamp deplores
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 241 
 
 the absence of Bouilhefs control was written during his hfe- 
 time and published immediately after his death ; it must 
 have enjoyed considerable revision by him. 
 
 The conclusion of Flauberfs preface to Bouilhefs post- 
 humous volume of poems shows what Flaubert believed to 
 be his friend's artistic position ; one is inclined to suspect 
 that it is to some extent also a position which Flaubert 
 made for him : — 
 
 ' He thought that Art is a serious thing, whose aim is to pro- 
 duce a vague exaltation, and even that all its morality lies in that. 
 I extract from a note-book the three following passages : 
 
 ' " In poetry the question whether the morals are virtuous 
 should not be considered, but whether they are in accordance 
 with those of the person represented. Accordingly poetry de- 
 scribes good and bad actions for us indifferently, without offering 
 the latter to us as an example." — Pierre Cornehxe. 
 
 ' " Art should only think in her creations of those faculties 
 which really have the right to judge her. If she does other- 
 wise, she walks in a wrong road." — Goethe. 
 
 ' " All the intellectual beauties that are to be discovered in a 
 fine style, all the complex relations which form it, are so many 
 truths as useful to the public intelligence as those which form 
 the essence of the subject,and perhaps more valuable." — Buffon. 
 
 ' Thus Art having her own end in herself should not be con- 
 sidered as a means. In spite of all the genius that could be put 
 into the development of one story, another might serve to prove 
 the contrary ; for the ends of plots are not conclusions ; from a 
 particular case general deductions cannot be made : and those 
 who think themselves in that matter progressive, run counter to 
 modern science, which demands the accumulation of a number 
 of facts before a law is established. 
 
 'Accordingly Bouilhet gave a wide berth to that preaching 
 form of Art which claims to instruct, correct, make moral. He 
 thought still less of the toy-shop Art, which aims at amusing, 
 like a game of cards, or causing emotion like an assize court ; and 
 he did not use the democratic Art, being convinced that its form, 
 to be accessible to all, would have to descend very low, and 
 
 Q
 
 242 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 that in civilised ages one becomes silly when one tries to be 
 simple. As for official Art, he rejected its advantages, because 
 he would have been obliged to defend causes which are not 
 eternal. 
 
 'Shunning paradox, morbid conditions, curiosities, all the 
 short paths, he took the high road, that is to say the ordinary 
 sentiments, the unchangeable sides of the human soul. And as 
 " ideas form the essence of style," he tried to think clearly, in 
 order to write well. Never did he say : 
 
 ' " The play is a good one, if Sal has shed tears," 
 
 he who wrote plays that moved to weeping, for he did not 
 believe that emotion can take the place of artistic method. 
 
 ' He hated the modern maxim that " one should write as one 
 speaks." In fact, the care given to a work, the long research, 
 the time, the trouble, all that was formerly a recommendation, 
 has now become a laughing-stock, so superior are we to all that 
 kind of thing, so overflowing with genius and facility. 
 
 ^ Not that he was wanting in this respect : his actors have 
 seen him make considerable corrections in their very midst. 
 "Inspiration," he would say, "should be invited, not sub- 
 mitted to." 
 
 ' Plastic being the first quality of Art, he gave his conceptions 
 the strongest possible relief, following that same Buffon, who 
 recommends that each idea should be expressed by an image. 
 But middle-class people are of opinion, so spiritual are they, that 
 colour is too material a thing to express sentiment, and their 
 French common sense, so comfortable on its peaceful hobby, is 
 afraid of being carried off to the skies, and cries every moment : 
 " Too many metaphors ! " as if it had a stock of them for sale. 
 
 ' Few authors have taken such care in the choice of words, 
 the variety of periods, transitions, — and he never conceded the 
 title of writer to one who possesses only certain parts of style. 
 How many of those most highly extolled would be incapable of 
 constructing a narrative, joining end to end in an analysis, a 
 portrait, a dialogue ! 
 
 ' He intoxicated himself with the rhythm of verses, the cad- 
 ence of prose, which should, like verse, be able to be read aloud. 
 Badly written phrases cannot stand this test ; they weigh on the
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 243 
 
 chest, disturb the action of the heart, and are thus outside the 
 conditions of healthy hfe. 
 
 ' His Hberahty of view made him admit all schools ; Shake- 
 speare and Boileau elbowed one onother on his table. 
 
 ' Of the Greeks he preferred first the Odyssey, then Aristo- 
 phanes the immense, and among the Latins, not the authors of 
 the Augustan era (except Virgil), but the others, who have some- 
 what more stiffness, sonority, as Tacitus and Juvenal. He had 
 studied Apuleius deeply. 
 
 'He used to read Rabelais continually, liked Corneille and 
 Lafontaine : nor did his romanticism prevent him from extolling 
 Voltaire. 
 
 ' But he hated Academy speeches, apostrophes to God, advice 
 to the people, what smells of the sewer, what stinks of vanilla, 
 the poetry of the pot-house, and dandified literature, the ponti- 
 fical style, and the style of the shirt-maker. 
 
 ' Many refinements were completely foreign to him, such as the 
 idolatry of the eighteenth century, the admiration of the style 
 of Calvin, the unceasing lamentation over the decadence of the 
 Arts, He had very little respect for M. de Maistre. He was 
 not dazzled by Proudhon. 
 
 ' According to him, sober minds were merely poor minds ; and 
 he abominated that sham good taste which is more execrable 
 than bad, discussions upon the beautiful, the cackle of criticism. 
 He would have been hung rather than write a preface. Here is 
 something which will say all this at greater length : it is a page 
 of a scribbling book entitled " Notes and Plans " — plans ! 
 
 ' " The present century is essentially paedagogic. There is not 
 a scribbler who does not reel off his harangue, no book, however 
 feeble, which does not hoist itself into a pulpit ! As to form, it 
 is proscribed. If you have the fortune to write well, you are 
 accused of wanting ideas. Wanting ideas ! Good God ! One 
 must be fool enough, indeed, to do without them considering 
 the price they cost. The recipe is simple ; with two or three 
 words : future, progress, society, you are a poet, were you Topi- 
 nambo himself ! A comfortable labour which encourages fools, 
 and consoles the envious. O stinking mediocrity ! Utilitarian 
 poetry ! Usher's literature ! Esthetic gabblings, economical 
 eructations, scrofulous productions of an exhausted race, I hate
 
 244 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 you with all the power of my soul. You are not gangrene, you 
 are atrophy ! You are not the red warm inflammation of the 
 periods of fever, but the chill abscess with its pale edges, 
 which comes down like a spring from some depth of internal 
 rottenness ! " 
 
 ' The day after his death Theophile Gauthier wrote : " He 
 carried high the old banner, torn in so many conflicts ; we may 
 wrap ourselves in it, as in a shroud. The brave band of Her- 
 nani is no more." That is true. His was an existence entirely 
 devoted to the ideal, one of those rare henchmen of literature 
 for literature's sake, the last fanatics of a religion near its extin- 
 tion — or extinct. 
 
 '"A genius of the second order," some will say. But those 
 of the fourth are not now so very common. Look how the 
 desert widens ! a wind of inanity, a waterspout of vulgarity, 
 envelops us, ready to cover up every height, every elegance. 
 People feel happy now in not respecting great men ; and maybe 
 we are on the point of losing, along with the literary tradition, 
 that indefinable aerial something which used to put into life 
 itself something higher than life. To create lasting works one 
 should not laugh at glory. A little wit is gained by the culti- 
 vation of imagination, and much nobility by the contemplation 
 of fine things.' 
 
 Such was Flauberfs conception of Bouilhefs literary 
 ideal; or is he only putting his own views in the mouth 
 of his dead friend "^ Unquestionably the friends thought 
 alike, and it was their loudly proclaimed doctrine of ' Art 
 for Arfs sake ' which was so annoying to serious-minded 
 persons like Maxime Ducamp. 
 
 This doctrine, like every other dogma, must be studied 
 rather with a view to what it contradicts than to what it 
 affirms. There are people who seriously maintain that 
 ' novels with a purpose ' are superior to all other romances. 
 Mr. Walter Besant's later books are therefore superior to 
 the Waverley Novels ; and on what a sublime throne is 
 elevated Madame Sarah Grand with her Heavenly Twins !
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 245 
 
 Roughly speaking, literary men are divided into two not 
 necessarily conflicting schools ; there is the school of matter 
 and the school of form. Of these schools the Teutonic 
 genius inclines to the first, the Latin to the second. In 
 Greek literature both are found in their completest expres- 
 sion. Latin and its eldest daughter Italian give us the 
 most artificial literary forms that have been used. Compare 
 Virgil's Mneid with the Odyssey, the Sonnets of Petrarch 
 with Chaucer''s Passionate Pilgrim, the prose of Tacitus 
 with the prose of Plato ; in the three Latin authors you 
 feel that the style is everything; in the others that it is 
 something, but not everything. Or, again, read a play of 
 Shakespeare, and afterwards the (Edipus Rex ; both have 
 matter, ideas ; but the wealth of the one is as incomparable 
 with the other as is the irregularity of the English poet 
 with the stately forms of the Greek. 
 
 Perfection lies in having something to say, and in saying 
 it^in-the best possible manner ; but it cannot be denied 
 that great pleasure may be derived from works in which 
 much is said badly, and also from those in which a little is 
 said weU. There are times when, and places where, the 
 pendulum of taste swings unduly in one direction or the 
 other. On the whole, the French tendency is towards form, 
 the English tendency towards matter ; yet England has 
 produced Milton, and France Rabelais. 
 
 The other question, as to whether the artist should be a 
 preacher or no, is one of extreme difficulty. To deny that 
 moral beauty is a fit subject for art is absurd ; and it is 
 equally ridiculous to declare a work of art immoral which 
 does not obviously teach a lesson. In his paradoxical moods 
 Flaubert would assert that an effective description of a 
 sunset was essentially no more beautiful than the description 
 of a disembowelled ox. The artistic power of reproducing
 
 246 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 the sensations with which the one or the other is contem- 
 plated being the achievement. We are disposed to quarrel 
 with him when he makes this assertion ; and yet we willingly 
 admit that the power of portraying moral hideousness is as 
 high an artistic accomplishment as that of depicting moral 
 beauty. 
 
 The province of literature is not settled by argumenta- 
 tion ; the question to be scientifically decided is not what 
 should he the aim of literature, but what does literature 
 actually effect ? A very small literary experience is enough 
 to show that in the art of letters, as in all other arts, there 
 are always a few technical proficients possessing the highest 
 possible skill in the manipulation of material, in the choice 
 of words, the laying on of colour, the grip of the bow 
 upon the string, whose performance raises and maintains the 
 standard of the mass, and whose methods, falling at rare 
 intervals into the hands of the man of genius, give us the 
 imperishable works. 
 
 For artistic conscience will not of itself alone give birth to 
 the completest works of art, though without it there can be 
 no art. Flaubert himself has said that the most perfect 
 technical performance is not to be looked for in the giants, 
 in the Shakespeares, but in the men of the second rank, in 
 the Molieres. To a few men the intelligent contemplation 
 of perfect artistic performance is in the highest degree 
 chastening and salutary, to them, as to Flaubert, there exists 
 neither purity nor impurity in art ; your true book cannot 
 be impure. But there are two difficulties which always 
 beset the question of the artist's morality : one is the fact 
 that the mass do not appreciate works of art Avith an artist's 
 eyes ; in looking at a picture they do not look only for 
 beauty, they look for a stoiy, a suggestion, the wakening of 
 a reminiscence ; they prefer Frith's ' Derby Day ' or Luke
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 247 
 
 Fildes' 'Rustic Wedding"' to the 'Madonna di San Sisto,' Land- 
 seer to Alma Tadema ; and another fact is that, books being 
 scattered broadcast, a perfectly artistic presentment of de- 
 bauchery despised by the author may prove over-attractive 
 to the imagination of the inexperienced reader. The passions 
 are capable of being stimulated (sometimes unhealthily) by 
 literature ; and this is the reason why the statement that 
 ' Art has no morality ' shocks most of us. Flaubert would 
 say that the unhealthy stimulus is unhealthy because the 
 presentment of the facts is incomplete ; and would further 
 urge against the preaching books, that they are seriously 
 demoralising, because they misrepresent the facts of life ; 
 that optimistic literature encourages tendencies which are 
 inherently unsoimd ; in the long-run even dangerous to the 
 wellbeing of society. His protest is not unneeded ; espe- 
 cially in our own country, where the tendency-literature is 
 paramount, and where its attractions have spoiled many a 
 good artist ; if Carlyle had been content to be a humourist, 
 Dickens forborne to meddle with social reforms, Thackeray 
 abstained from moralising, Kingsley not been a clergyman, 
 George Eliot forgotten to philosophise ! England, however, 
 can certainly boast of having produced one prose author 
 who has religiously followed Flaubert"'s canons of art with 
 complete success. Robert Louis Stevenson''s New Arabian 
 Nights are irresistible, and their attraction is so obviously 
 independent of their subject-matter that we are forced to 
 admit that never was the story-telling art, as an art, carried 
 to higher perfection. 
 
 One other aspect of ' Art for Art's sake ' deserves a 
 moment's attention, and that is its commercial aspect ; 
 naturally neither Flaubert nor Bouilhet would hear of 
 writing with one eye on the financial profits of the work ; 
 and in this relation Flaubert made a profound remark :
 
 248 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' Works that are written for all time cannot expect to be 
 paid for by the generation which happens to be living when 
 they come into existence."' Those works are most likely to 
 be highly paid for by the current generation, which hit its 
 purely ephemeral conditions. 
 
 Even a sharp contrast with the prevailing fashion may 
 give a book a wholly undeserved and short-lived popularity ; 
 and its author will be proportionately overpaid. On the 
 other hand, there are works deliberately written with a view 
 to contemporary events which prove to be immortal owing to 
 the surpassing merit of their style. Will Gulliver's Travels 
 ever cease to be read ? or the Clouds of Aristophanes ? 
 
 Flaubert''s friends did not like being told that they had no 
 business to think of the pecuniary profits of literature, and 
 sometimes unkindly suggested that he could afford to talk in 
 this way, being in the fortunate enjoyment of an independent 
 fortune; but the doctrine was equally loudly upheld by 
 Bouilhet, who had nothing. 
 
 On the whole, Flaubert's dogma was a healthy one ; it 
 could be misapplied, and has in more than one instance been 
 abused ; but it impelled the young men to take pains, and 
 mistrust the success of the feuilleton. 
 
 On the day of Louis Bouilhet's funeral a movement was 
 started to raise a fund in order to establish some permanent 
 memorial of the poet in Rouen. In a very short time over 
 six hundred pounds was subscribed, and an application was 
 made to the Municipal Council of Rouen for leave to erect 
 in some public place a fountain ornamented with the poet's 
 bust. For some inscrutable reason the Councillors rejected 
 the gift, and Flaubert then addressed a letter to them, 
 which was published in the papers, to the horror of the 
 gentle Ducamp, and probably many other quiet folk. With 
 slashing logic the enraged Flaubert demolished the alleged
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 249 
 
 reasons given by the Town Council for their action, held up 
 to ridicule the verses of one of their number who had been 
 so ill advised as to communicate doggerel rhymes to the 
 Rouen Academy, of which he was a member, and concluded 
 with an address to middle-class people in general, which is 
 well worth studying and taking to heart. It was written 
 after the Franco-Prussian war. 
 
 ' This affair in itself is a very small matter. But one can note 
 it as a sign of the times — as a trait characteristic of your class ; 
 and it is no longer to you, gentlemen, that I address myself, 
 but to all middle-class folk. Then I say to them : 
 
 ' " Ye conservatives who preserve nothing," it is high time 
 to tread in another path — and since the talk is of i-egeneration, 
 of decentralisation, change your habits of mind ! Do at last 
 have some initiative ! 
 
 ' The French nobility came to grief through having had the 
 sentiments of a flunkeydom for two centuries. The end of the 
 middle-class is coming, because it has those of the people. 1 
 do not see that it reads other newspapers, that it treats itseh 
 to other music, that it has more elevated pleasures. With 
 the one as with the other there is the same love of money, the 
 same respect for the accomplished fact, the same need of idols 
 to destroy, the same hatred of all superiority, the same crass 
 ignorance ! 
 
 ' There are seven hundred of you in the National Assembly. 
 How many of those are there who can tell the names of the 
 principal treaties in our history, or the dates of six kings of 
 France .'' who know the first elements of political economy ? 
 who have read even Bastiat ? The Municipality of Rouen, 
 which has denied as a body the merit of a poet, is possibly 
 ignorant of the rules of versification. And it has no need to 
 know them, so long as it does not meddle with verses. 
 
 ' To be respected by what is below you, please to respect 
 what is above you ! 
 
 ' Before sending the people to school, go there yourselves ! 
 
 ' Enlightened classes, seek enlightenment. Because of this 
 contempt for intelligence you think yourselves full of good
 
 250 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 sense, positive, practical ! But one is only really practical on 
 condition of being a little more so. . , . You would not be 
 enjoying all the benefits of commerce if your fathers of the 
 eighteenth century had had no ideal except that of material 
 utility. Germany has been sufficiently joked, I presume, on the 
 subject of her theorisers, her dreamers, her misty poets! You 
 have seen, alas ! where her mists have brought her ! Your 
 milliards have paid her for all the time that she had not wasted 
 in constructing systems. I have an idea that the dreamer 
 Fichte re-organised the Prussian army after Jena, and that the 
 poet Koerner sent some Uhlans against us about the year 1813. 
 
 ' You, practical ! Come now ! You do not know how to 
 hold either a pen or a rifle ! You allow yourselves to be 
 robbed, imprisoned, murdered by mere criminals ! You have 
 not even the brute instinct of self-defence, and when the ques- 
 tion is not mei'ely of your skins, but of your purse, which 
 should be dearer to you, energy fails you to go and put a 
 bit of paper in a box ! With all your capital and all your 
 sober sense, you cannot form an association equal to the 
 International ! 
 
 ' Your whole intellectual effoi't consists in trembling before 
 the future. 
 
 ' Bethink yourselves of something else. Rouse yourselves, or 
 France will soon sink deeper and deeper into the gulf, between 
 a hideous demagogy and a mindless middle-class.' 
 
 Can this be that same French middle-class that Mr. 
 Matthew Arnold was wont to hold up to Englishmen as a 
 brilliant example ?
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE ' EDUCATION SENTIMENTALE ^ THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 
 
 LETTERS TO GEORGE SAND DEATH OF HIS MOTHER 
 
 The Education Senthnentale had the misfortune to be pub- 
 lished just when the great war was impending; other things 
 were more in the minds of men than the last novel. Worse 
 than that, many of the characters were recognisable under 
 their disguises ; there was a silent, unconscious conspiracy to 
 let the book drop unnoticed, if possible ; and the book was 
 dropped. 
 
 It is, however, not improbable that of contemporary 
 novels this one will have the longest life, but not on its 
 merits as a romance : it will always be deeply interesting to 
 the historical student. In spite of his professed contempt 
 for the popular judgment, Flaubert was hurt, amazed, un- 
 settled by the cold reception given to his work. He writes 
 to George Sand : — 
 
 'Your old troubadour is mightily blackened by the press. 
 Read the Constitutionnel of last Monday, the Gaulois of this 
 morning; that's square and clear. I am treated as an idiot 
 and a rascal. The article of Barbey d'Aurevilly is a model in 
 this style, and that of the good Sarcey, although less violent, 
 is not an inch behind him. These gentlemen protest in the 
 name of morality and the Ideal. I have also had some gashes 
 in the Figaro and in Paris by Cesena and Duranty. I don't 
 care a snap ! That, however, does not prevent my being 
 astounded at so much hatred and falseness. The Tribune, the 
 
 251
 
 252 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 Pays, and the Opinion Nationale have in compensation highly 
 extolled me. As for the friends, the persons, who have received 
 a copy ornamented with my fist, they are afraid of compromis- 
 ing themselves, and speak to me of something else. The honest 
 fellows are scarce. None the less, the book sells well in spite 
 of politics, and Levy seems to me satisfied. 
 
 ' I know that the good folk of Rouen are furious with me, 
 because of old Roque and the cancan in the Tuileries. They 
 think that the publication of books like that ought to be pre- 
 vented (textual), that I lend a hand to the Reds, that I am 
 even capable of stirring the fire of revolutionary passions, etc. 
 etc. In short, up to the present I gather but few laurels, and 
 no rose-leaf wounds me. 
 
 ' Sarcey has published a second article against me. 
 
 ' Barbey d' Aurevilly will have it that I defile the stream by 
 washing in it (sic).' 
 
 A year or two later Flaubert used to protest that the 
 horrors of 1870, and the political chaos that followed, might 
 have been averted had the French people read and under- 
 stood his Education Sentimentale ; and he was right. But a 
 book that requires to be understood in the way that this 
 book requires understanding, is not a book that can be read 
 by many. The book is, in fact, an elaborate analysis of 
 Parisian upper and lower middle-class society in the middle 
 of the century ; a historical study, not a romance ; the ideas 
 prevalent at the period are personified, and in not a few 
 cases real persons thinly disguised represent the ideas. The 
 individual through Avhom we see them all, the hero of the 
 romance, is probably in himself one of the least interesting 
 figures in fiction. Arthur Pendennis is vapid enough, but 
 Frederic Moreau is of a hundred Arthur Pendennis power. 
 A man devoid of vice and virtue, unstable, heartless, whose 
 chief impelling motive of action of any sort is a feeble 
 flickering vanity, helped on occasionally by an equally feeble 
 lustfulness, he stands out, even in the confraternity of the
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 253 
 
 weak-kneed heroes of feminine fiction, as the most tiresome 
 of male human beings. And yet how appalHngly true he 
 is ! As well known in Hyde Park as on the Boulevards, in 
 the Temple as in the Quartier Latin. Equally well drawn 
 are a lady of worse than doubtful reputation, a rascally 
 middle-class dealer of the type whose matrimonial infelicities 
 have now expelled those of the aristocracy from the London 
 Divorce Courts, a banker who is a politician, and one 
 Deslauriers, the friend of Frederic's youth, one of those men 
 ' who are never so pleased as when they are urging their 
 friends to do what they do not like.' 
 
 Of action there is plenty, including all the street-fighting 
 of 1848, of plot next to none, development of character 
 almost as little. Still, the book is worth reading, and re- 
 reading ; but it will never carry the votes of the comfortable 
 middle-class folk, who believe themselves to live in the best 
 of all possible worlds, and only ask of fate to be allowed to 
 cultivate their gardens peaceably in the intervals of irre- 
 sponsible gossip. 
 
 The almost absolute exclusion from this book of real tender- 
 ness of heart is particularly striking. Of all men, Flaubert 
 must have known that disinterested affection is not an uncom- 
 mon motive influencing the actions of the most unlikely 
 people. No man did more for his friends, no man did more for 
 his family ; there never was a man so well loved, or who loved 
 so well ; and yet in a very full — an over-full — picture of 
 society at a particular epoch, he deliberately omits the most 
 ordinary affection. The friendship between the hero and 
 Deslauriers is repeatedly ridiculed, and is helpful to neither. 
 The genuine gratitude of one Dussardier, a young shopman, 
 to Moreau and his friends is slurred over. Flaubert's revolt 
 against optimism has been carried too far. Or may it not 
 be that men's ideas were more interesting to Flaubert than
 
 254 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 their affections — the weaknesses of their intellects a more 
 attractive subject than the sufferings of their hearts ? In 
 fact, the satirist had not yet found his form. He was still 
 fettered by the necessity of writing a romance, and therefore 
 could not say, what was burning on his lips, in the most 
 effective fashion. 
 
 After the publication of the Education Sentimentale, 
 Flaubert found some difficulty in setting to work again ; he 
 missed Bouilhet profoundly. He writes to George Sand : — 
 
 * In losing my poor Bouilhet I have lost my man-midwife ; 
 the man who saw more clearly into my own thoughts than I 
 saw myself. His death has left me a void which I perceive 
 more plainly every day. 
 
 ' I no longer feel the need to write, because I used to write 
 specially for one single being who is no more. That is the 
 truth ! And yet I shall continue to write. But the taste is no 
 longer there, the pre-occupation is gone. There are so few 
 people who love what I love, who concern themselves with 
 what I find absorbing. Do you know in this Paris, which is so 
 great, one single house in which literature is talked about .'' 
 And when it is incidentally approached, it is always by its 
 subaltern and exterior sides, the question of success, morality, 
 utility, etc. It seems to me that I am becoming a fossil, a 
 being without any relation to the surrounding creation.' 
 
 And again, writing to Edmond de Goncourt on the death 
 of his brother : — 
 
 ' You wish me to speak to you of myself, my dear Edmond ? 
 Well, I am giving myself up to a work which causes me great 
 pain, for I am writing the preface to Bouilhet's volume. I have 
 passed as lightly as possible over the biographical part. I shall 
 expand more on his (or our) literary doctrines. 
 
 ' I have re-read all that he has written. I have turned over 
 our old letters. I have stirred a series of reminiscences, some 
 of which are thirty-seven years old ! It is not a very gay busi- 
 ness, as you see. Besides, here at Croisset I am pursued by his
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 255 
 
 phantom, which I find behmd every bush in the garden, on the 
 sofa in my study, and even in my clothes, my dressing-gowns 
 which he used to wear.' 
 
 Eventually he settled down to re-write the St. Anthony^ 
 which has been already described ; he had barely got to 
 work when the great war broke out. 
 
 For this period of Flauberfs life the fullest illustration is 
 given by his correspondence with George Sand. He had 
 begun to write to her in 1866, but the letters did not become 
 very frequent till two years later ; after the death of Bouilhet 
 this remarkable woman became the recipient of most of 
 Flaubert's outpourings ; and his letters, truthfully reflecting, 
 as they always do, the nature of his correspondent, incline 
 one to think very kindly of the author of Lelia and Spiridion, 
 Mr. Thackeray notwithstanding. 
 
 Flaubert was professedly not a politician ; nothing was 
 more distasteful to him than the thoughtless chatter, whether 
 inside or outside of legislative assemblies, which passes for 
 politics. He very nearly withdrew from the fortnightly 
 dinner of literary friends at Magny's restaurant, because one 
 evening had been wasted in political conversation ; none the 
 less, he unconsciously studied the history of his own time 
 attentively; we have just seen how he wrote a serious con- 
 tribution to political history under the impression that he 
 was writing a romance. The events of '70 stirred him pro- 
 foundly. We, who have never known an invasion, may read 
 his letters at this period with sympathy and profit. Unless 
 it is otherwise indicated, the following letters were all 
 written to George Sand : — 
 
 ' What is becoming of you, my dear master, of you and yours ? 
 For my part, I am disheartened, utterly cast down, by the inane 
 stupidity of my fellow-countrymen. The incurable barbarism 
 of humanity fills me with a black melancholy. This enthusiasm,
 
 256 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 which has no idea as its motive force, makes me long to die, so 
 as to behold it no longer. Our good Frenchman wants to fight 
 — (1) because he believes himself challenged by Prussia; (2) 
 because the natural state of man is savagery ; (3) because war 
 contains in itself that mystic element which transports the 
 masses. 
 
 ' Have we got back to the race wars ? I fear it. The fright- 
 ful butchery that is being prepared has not even a pretext. It 
 is the wish to fight for fighting's sake. 
 
 ' I weep over the broken bridges, the ruined tunnels, all this 
 human labour wasted — in a word, such a radical negative. 
 
 ' The peace congress is wrong for the moment. Civilisation 
 seems to me a long way off. Hobbes was right : Homo homini 
 lupus. 
 
 ' I have begun St. Anthony, and that would go well enough 
 did I not think of the war — and you ! 
 
 ' The middle-class man of these parts no longer contains him- 
 self. He is of opinion that Prussia was too insolent, and wishes 
 " to revenge himself" Did you see that a gentleman in the 
 Chamber proposed to pillage the duchy of Baden } Ah, why 
 can I not live with the Bedouins } ' 
 
 ' Wed7iesday, August 3, 1870. 
 
 ' How now, dear master ! You too demoralised — sad ? What 
 is then to become of the weak } 
 
 ' My heart is oppressed in a way which amazes myself, and I 
 wallow in a bottomless melancholy in spite of my work, in spite 
 of the good St. Anthony, who should distract me. Is it the 
 consequence of my repeated sorrows .'' Possibly. But the war 
 counts for much. Meseems we are walking into blackness. 
 
 ' Here then we have the natural man. It is all over with the 
 theories now ! Cry up progress, the enlightenment, the good 
 sense of the masses, and the gentleness of the French people ! 
 I assure you that if one took upon oneself to preach peace 
 here, one would get one's head broken. Whatever may happen, 
 we have gone back for a long time. 
 
 ' Perhaps the wars of races are about to begin again .-* Before 
 a hundred years are out we shall see several millions of men 
 massacre one another at a sitting. The whole East against the
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 257 
 
 whole of Europe ; the old world against the new ! Why not ? 
 Great united works like the Suez Canal are perhaps, under 
 another form, only sketches, preparations for those monstrous 
 conflicts of which we have at present no idea ! 
 
 ' Perhaps, too, Prussia is going to get a smart slap, which was 
 part of the designs of Providence, to re-establish the equilibrium 
 of Europe ? That country was tending to hypertrophy, like the 
 France of Louis xiv. and Napoleon, The other organs were 
 discommoded by it. Hence general disturbance. Formidable 
 blood-lettings may possibly be salutary ? 
 
 ' Ah, we literary folk ! Humanity is far from our ideal ! and 
 our immense error, our deadly error, is to think it like us, and 
 to wish to treat it accordingly. 
 
 'The respect, the fetish-worship, that is given to universal 
 suffrage is more revolting to me than the infallibility of the 
 Pope (which, by the way, has just missed fire finely). Do you 
 think that if France, instead of being governed, in the last 
 resort, by the mass, were in the power of Mandarins, we should 
 be where we are ? If, instead of wishing to enlighten the lower 
 classes, trouble had been taken to instruct the higher, you 
 would not have seen M. de Keratry propose the pillage of the 
 duchy of Baden, a measure which the public consider very 
 just! 
 
 ' Do you study Prudhomme at the present epoch ? He is 
 gigantic. He admires de Musset's Rhine and asks if de 
 Musset has written anything else. So you see, de Musset has 
 become a national poet, and is putting Beranger's nose out of 
 joint. What an immense farce everything is ! But the re- 
 verse of a gay farce. 
 
 ' Distress plainly declares itself. Everybody is in difficulties, 
 myself to begin with. But perhaps we had become over- 
 habituated to the comfortable and tranquil. We were founder- 
 ing in material things. We must return to the great tradition, 
 cease to cling to life, happiness, money, anything ; be what 
 our grandfathers were — light, gaseous personages. 
 
 ' In other times men spent their existence in dying of hunger. 
 The same perspective looms on the horizon. What you tell 
 me about poor Nohant is abominable. The country here has 
 suffered less than with you.' 
 
 R
 
 258 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' I went to Paris on Monday and came back again on Wed- 
 nesday. Now I know the Parisian to the very bottom, and in 
 my heart I have excused the most ferocious politics of 1793. 
 Now I understand them. What inanity ! What ignorance ! 
 What presumption ! My fellow-countrymen make me long to 
 be sick. They are fit to be put in the same bag as Isidore 
 (Napoleon iii.) ! 
 
 'This people deserves to be chastised, and I fear it may 
 be. . . .' 
 
 ' Here we are at the bottom of the abyss ! A dishonourable 
 peace will not, perhaps, be accepted. The Prussians wish to 
 destroy Paris ! It is their dream. 
 
 ' I do not think the siege of Paris is very near. But to force 
 Paris to yield they are going (1) to frighten her by the appari- 
 tion of cannon ; and (2) to ravage the surrounding provinces. 
 
 ' At Rouen we are expecting a visit from these gentlemen, 
 and as I am (since Sunday) lieutenant of my company, I drill 
 my men, and go to Rouen to take lessons in the art of war. 
 
 'The deplorable thing is that opinions are divided, some being 
 for resistance to the last, others for peace at any price. 
 
 ' I am dying of vexation. What a house mine is ! Fourteen 
 persons wailing and dispiriting you. I curse women. It is 
 through them that we perish. 
 
 ' I am expecting Paris to have to submit to the fate of War- 
 saw, and you vex me with your enthusiasm for the Republic. 
 At the moment at which we are conquered by the most absolute 
 positivism, how can you still believe in phantoms ? Whatever 
 happens, the people, who are now in power, will be sacrificed, 
 and the Republic will follow their fate. Observe that I defend 
 this poor creature of a Republic, but I don't believe in it. . . . 
 
 ' . . . This is the point to which we have been brought by the 
 mania for refusing to see the truth ! By the love of sham and 
 humbug. We are going to become a Poland, then a Spain. 
 Then it will be Prussia's turn, who will be eaten up by Russia. 
 
 ' As for myself, I consider myself a man done for. My brain 
 will not recover itself. One cannot write when one has lost 
 one's self-esteem. I only ask for one thing, that is, to die 
 and be quiet.'
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 259 
 
 Extract from a letter to Edmond de Goncourt. 
 
 ' I have engaged myself as attendant at the hospital at Rouen, 
 till I go to defend Lutetia, if siege is laid to her (which I don't 
 believe). I feel a longing, a prurient desire to fight. Is it the 
 re-appearance of the blood of my ancestors, the Natchez ? No, 
 it is the explosion of the beastliness of existence. Happy are 
 those, whom we regret, my poor friend ! ' 
 
 Writing to Claudius Popelin, he says : — 
 
 'Others are not like myself Some even support our misfor- 
 tunes saucily enough. There are ready-made phrases, which con- 
 sole the masses for everything : France will raise herself again ! 
 why despair ? It is a wholesome chasleiiing ! etc. Oh this eternal 
 humbug ! ' 
 
 On the 29th of September 1870, in a letter to Maxima 
 Ducamp, occurs the following passage : — 
 
 'After bordering on, "grazing" madness or suicide, I am now 
 completely recovei*ed. I have bought a haversack, and am ready 
 for anything. I assure you this all begins to be very fine. 
 This evening there arrived at Croisset four hundred mohiles 
 coming to us from the Pyrenees. I have two in my house, not 
 counting two at Paris ; my mother has two at Rouen, Comman- 
 ville five at Paris, and two at Dieppe. I spent my time in 
 drilling and night-patrol. Since last Sunday I have started 
 work again, and am no longer sad. In the middle of all this 
 there are, or rather have been, scenes of an exquisite grotesque- 
 ness ; humanity is shown bare at such times. What afflicts me 
 is the prodigious inanity with which we shall be overwhelmed 
 afterwards. 
 
 ' All " gentlenesse," as Montaigne would have said, is lost for a 
 long while, a new world will begin ; children will be brought 
 up in the hatred of Prussia ! Military ism, the most abject posi- 
 tivism, will be our lot henceforth! — unless, the powder puri- 
 fying the air, we come out of it all stronger and sounder, I 
 think we shall shortly be avenged by a general upheaval. 
 When Prussia has the ports of Holland, Courland, and Trieste, 
 England, Austria, and Russia, will have time to repent.
 
 260 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 William was wrong not to make peace after Sedan; our disgrace 
 would have been irredeemable ; now we are beginning to 
 become objects of interest. As for our immediate success, who 
 knows ? The Prussian army is a marvellous machine in its pre- 
 cision, but all machines get out of gear unexpectedly; a slip 
 may break a spring. Our enemy has science on her side ; but 
 sentiment, inspiration, despair are forces to be reckoned with. 
 Victory should remain with the right, and now we are in the 
 right. Yes, you speak truly ; we are paying for the long lie in 
 which we have lived, for everything was sham ; sham army, 
 sham politics, sham literature, sham credit, and even sham 
 whores. To say the truth, it was an immoral existence. Per- 
 signy reproached me all last winter with " wanting ideal " ! 
 And perhaps he was in earnest. We are going to make some 
 fine discoveries ; it will be a pretty story to write I Ah ! how 
 humbled I am at having become a savage, for my heart is as dry 
 as a stone ! Whereupon I am going to re-don my costume, and 
 go and make a little military excursion in the forest of Canteleu. 
 Do you think of the number of poor that we must have .'' All 
 the manufactories are shut, and the workmen have neither work 
 nor bread ; it will be fine this winter ! In spite of all that, — I 
 may be mad, — something tells me that we shall come out of it 
 all.' 
 
 TO GEORGE SAND. 
 
 ' . . . Explain this to me ! The idea of making peace exas- 
 perates me now, and I would prefer to have Paris burnt like 
 Moscow rather than see the Prussians enter. But we are not at 
 that point yet ; I think the wind is turning. 
 
 ' I have read some soldiers' letters which are models. A 
 country in which such things are written is not swallowed up. 
 France is a jade with stay in her, and will get up again.' 
 
 Tuesday, October llth, 1870. 
 
 ' What distress ! I had at my door to-day two hundred and 
 seventy-one poor people, and all were relieved ! What will it 
 be in the winter ! 
 
 ' The Prussians are now within twelve hours of Rouen, and 
 we have no orders, no command, no discipline, nothing, nothing ! 
 We are always put off with the army of the Loire. Where is it }
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 261 
 
 Do you know anything of it ? What is happening in the centre 
 of France ? . . . 
 
 ' I do not beheve that a sadder man than myself exists in 
 France ! (Everything depends upon the degree of sensitiveness.) 
 I am dying of vexation. That is the truth, and consolation 
 irritates me. What knocks me down is (1) human ferocity, (2) 
 the conviction that we are entering upon an era of stupidity. We 
 shall be utilitarian, military, American, and Catholic — very 
 Catholic ! you will see. The Prussian war ends, and destroys 
 the French Revolution. . . . 
 
 ' . . . What a collapse ! What a fall ! what distress ! What 
 abomination ! Can one believe in progress and civilisation in 
 the presence of all that is happening ? 
 
 ' What, pray, is the use of science, since this people, full of 
 scientific men, commits abominations worthy of the Huns ; and 
 worse than theirs, for they are systematic, cold, designed, and 
 are not excused either by passion or hunger ! 
 
 ' Why do they hate us so ? Do not you feel crushed by the 
 hatred of forty millions of men ? That immense, infernal gulf 
 makes me giddy.' . . . 
 
 TO MADAME REGNIER. 
 
 'Dieppe, March lllh, 1871. 
 
 * ... I was like Rachel, I " would not be comforted," and I 
 spent my nights seated on my bed, rattling like one about to die. 
 I am angry with my time for having given me the sentiments 
 of a twelfth-century brute. What barbarism ! What retrogres- 
 sion ! And yet I was scarcely a progressive and humanitai-ian ! 
 Never mind, I had my illusions ! And I did not expect to see 
 the coming of the e?id of the world. For that is where we are ; 
 we are looking on at the end of the Latin world. Farewell 
 then to all that we love ! Paganism, Christianity, Smuggery. 
 Those are the three great evolutions of humanity. It is not 
 pleasant to find one's self in the last. Ah — we are to see fine 
 times ! My bile suffocates me. That is the upshot of it." . . . 
 
 There is no exaggeration in this ; when Flaubert gave 
 way at this time to his wrathful feelings he repeatedly be- 
 came literally, physically sick.
 
 262 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 But the worst had not come yet ; the Prussian occupation 
 Mas followed by the Commune. 
 
 Neuville, near Dieppe, March 31, 1871. 
 
 ' Is it the end of humbug ? Will one be done with hollow 
 metaphysics and accepted opinions ? The whole mischief comes 
 from our gigantic ignorance. What should be studied, is believed 
 without discussion. Instead of looking, people affirm. 
 
 ' The French Revolution must cease to be a dogma ; it must be 
 brought under the kingdom of science like everything else 
 human. If people had been more scientific they would not 
 have believed that a mystical formula is capable of making 
 armies, and that the word " Republic " is enough to conquer a 
 million of disciplined men. Badinguet should have been left on 
 the throne expressly to make peace, with full liberty to send 
 him to the galleys afterwards. If people had been more learned 
 they would have known what the volunteers of '92 were, and 
 the retreat of Brunswick purchased, money down, by Danton 
 and Westermann. But no ! Always the old string ! Always 
 humbug ! Now we have the Paris Commune, which is returning 
 to pure Middle Ages ! That is neat ! The question of rents in 
 particular is splendid. The government now interferes with 
 natural right; it meddles with contracts between individuals. 
 The Commune declares that one does not owe one's debts, and 
 that one service is not paid for by another service. It is gigan- 
 tic in silliness and injustice. 
 
 ' Many Conservatives who wanted to preserve the Republic 
 through love of order, are by way of regretting Badinguet, and 
 in their hearts call for the Prussians. The good folk of the 
 Hotel de Ville have displaced our hatreds. That is the grudge 
 I owe them. It seems to me we have never been lower. 
 
 * We are tossed about between the Society of St Vincent de 
 Paul and the International. But this latter commits too many 
 follies to have a long life. I admit that it may beat the troops 
 from Versailles, and upset the Government ; the Prussians will 
 come into Paris^ and "order will reign at Warsaw.'' If, on the 
 contrary, it is beaten, the reaction will be furious, and all liberty 
 stiHed.
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 263 
 
 ' What are we to say of the Sociahsts^ who imitate the pro- 
 ceedings of Badinguet and WilHam ; requisitions, suppressions 
 of papers, capital executions without trial, etc. ? Ah, what 
 an immoral beast the people is ! And how humiliating to be 
 human ! 
 
 ' Why no letters ? You have, then, not received mine sent 
 from Dieppe ? Are you ill ? Are you still alive ? What does 
 that mean? I certainly hope that neither you (nor any of 
 yours) are at Paris, capital of the arts, hearth of civilisation, 
 centre of good manners and politeness. 
 
 ' Do you know the worst of all that .'' It is that one gets used 
 to it. Yes ! One puts up with it. One gets accustomed to 
 doing without Paris, to thinking no more about it, and almost 
 to believing that it is no longer in existence. 
 
 ' For my own part, I am not like the middle-class ; I think 
 that there is no misfortune left after the invasion. The Prussian 
 war has affected me like a great upheaval of nature, one of those 
 cataclysms such as happen every six thousand years : while the 
 insurrection of Paris is in my eyes a very clear, almost a simple 
 thing. . . . 
 
 ' I reply at once to your questions on what concerns me per- 
 sonally. No ! The Prussians have not sacked my habitation. 
 They have prigged some little articles of no importance, a small 
 dressing-case, a bandbox, some pipes ; but in the main they 
 have done no harm. As for my study, it has been respected. 
 I had buried a great box full of letters, and put my voluminous 
 notes on St. Anthony in a safe place. All that I found 
 untouched. 
 
 ' The worst of the invasion for me is that it has aged my poor 
 good old mother by ten years. What a change ! She can no 
 longer walk alone, and her feebleness is pitiable. How sad it 
 is to see the beings one loves gradually deteriorate ! . . . 
 
 ' ... As for the Commune, which is on the way to expire, it 
 is the last manifestation of the Middle Ages. The very last, let 
 us hope ! 
 
 ' I hate democracy (such at least as it is understood in 
 France), that is to say, the exaltation of mercy to the detri- 
 ment of justice, the negation of right ; in one word, the opposite 
 of society.
 
 264 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' The Commune rehabilitates assassins, as Jesus pardoned 
 thieves, and wealthy houses are pillaged, because people have 
 learned to curse Dives {Lazarus in the original), who was not a 
 bad rich man, but simply a rich man. " The Republic is above 
 all discussion " is worth as much as the other faith, " The Pope 
 is infallible ! " Always formulas, always gods ! 
 
 ' The last god but one, who was universal suffrage, has just 
 played a terrible prank upon his worshippers in naming " the 
 assassins of Versailles." Then in what must one believe ? In 
 nothing ! That is the beginning of wisdom. It was time to 
 rid oneself of " principles," and to enter upon science, upon 
 inquiry. The only reasonable thing (I always come back to 
 this) is a government of Mandarins, provided that the Man- 
 darins know something, and even that they know many things. 
 The people is an eternal infant, and it will always be in the last 
 rank in the hierarchy of social elements, because it is the 
 number, the mass, the unlimited. It matters little whether 
 many peasants know how to read, and don't listen to their 
 parson, but it is infinitely important that men like Renan or 
 Littre should be able to live and be listened to. Our only 
 salvation now is in a legitimate aristocracy ; I mean by that a 
 majority which will be composed of something more than mere 
 figures. 
 
 ' If people had been more enlightened, if there had been in 
 Paris more people knowing history, we should not have put up 
 with Gambetta, nor Prussia, nor the Commune. What did the 
 Catholics do to meet a great danger } They crossed them- 
 selves, recommending themselves to God and the Saints. 
 
 ' We, who are advanced, we go and cry, " Hurrah for the 
 Republic! " calling up the remembrance of 1792 ; and there was 
 no doubt about the success ; mark that ! The Prussian no 
 longer existed. 
 
 ' We embraced one another for joy, and kept hold of one 
 another, so as not to go and run to the defiles of the Argonne, 
 where there are no longer defiles ; never mind, that is tradition ! 
 I have a friend at Rouen, who proposed at a club the manu- 
 facture oi pikes to encounter chassepots ! 
 
 ' Ah, how much more practical it would have been to keep 
 Badinguet, and send him to the galleys as soon as peace was
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 265 
 
 made ! Austria did not go into revolution after Sadowa, nor 
 Italy after Novara, nor Russia after Sebastopol ! But our good 
 Frenchmen hasten to pull down their house as soon as the 
 chimney takes fire. . . .' 
 
 ' Croisset, Jmie 10th, 1871. 
 
 ' Never have I had a greater longing, a greater need, to see 
 you than now. I come from Paris, and I do not know whom 
 to speak to. I am suffocated. I am quite knocked up, or 
 rather out of heart. 
 
 ' The odour of corpses disgusts me less than the miasma of 
 egotism breathing from all mouths. The sight of the ruins is 
 nothing in comparison with the immense Parisian inanity. 
 With very rare exceptions, everybody seemed to me only fit 
 for the strait-waistcoat. 
 
 ' One half of the population longs to hang the other half, 
 which returns the compliment. That is clearly to be read in 
 the eyes of the passers-by. 
 
 ' And the Prussians no longer exist ! They are excused and 
 admired. The "men of reason" wish to get themselves 
 naturalised as Germans. I assure you, it is enough to make 
 one despair of the human race. . . . 
 
 'What say you of my friend Maury, who kept the tricolor 
 flying on the Archives the whole time of the Commune ? I 
 think few people are capable of such a bit of pluck. . . . 
 
 ' Did you notice among the documents found at the Tuileries 
 
 last September a plot of a romance by Isidore ? What a 
 
 scenario ! ' 
 
 'September 6, 1871. 
 
 '. . . But what beats everything now is the Conservative 
 party, which does not even go to vote, and which does not 
 cease to tremble. You can't imagine the funk of the Parisians. 
 " In six months, sir, the Commune will be established every- 
 where," is the universal answer, or rather wail. 
 
 ' I do not believe in a near cataclysm, because nothing that 
 has been foreseen happens. The International will perhaps 
 end by triumphing, but not as it hopes, not as is feared. Ah ! 
 how tired I am of the base working-man, the inept middle- 
 class man, the stupid peasant, and the odious ecclesiastic ! 
 
 ' That is why, as far as I can, I lose myself in antiquity. At
 
 ^66 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 the present moment I am making all the gods talk in their 
 (lying struggle. The second title of my book might be " The 
 ne plus ultra of insanity." And the typography vanishes 
 further and further in my mind. Why publish .'' Who now 
 cares about art .'' I make literature for my own satisfaction, 
 like a middle-class man turning table-rings in a barn. You 
 will tell me that it would be better to be useful. But how ? 
 How get a hearing } . . .' 
 
 'September 8, 1871. 
 
 ' . . . The idea of equality, which is all the modern demo- 
 cracy, is an essentially Christian idea, and opposed to that of 
 justice. See how pardon now predominates ! Sentiment is 
 everything, right nothing. People are even ceasing to be 
 indignant against the murderers, and the folk who set fire to 
 Paris are less punished than the libeller of M. Favre. . . . 
 
 ' ... As to the good people, " free and compulsory educa- 
 tion" will finish it. When everybody is able to read the Petit 
 Journal and Figaro they will not read anything else ; for the 
 middle-class man, the gentleman of property, reads nothing 
 more. The press is a school of ignorance, because it relieves 
 from thought. Say that, you will be fine ; and if you win 
 conviction, you will have done a proud service. 
 
 ' The first remedy would be to be done with universal suf- 
 frage, the disgrace of the human intellect. As it is constituted, 
 one single element prevails to the detriment of all others ; 
 number domineers over intellect, education, race, and even 
 money, which is worth more than number. 
 
 ' But a society (which always has need of a kind God, of a 
 Saviour) is perhaps incapable of defending itself. The Con- 
 servative party has not even the instinct of the brute (for the 
 brute at least knows how to fight for its lair and its victuals). 
 It will be divided by the Internationals, the Jesuits of the 
 future. But those of the past, who too had neither country 
 nor justice, did not succeed, and the International will founder 
 because it is on the wrong tack, — no ideas, nothing but con- 
 cupiscence ! 
 
 ' Ah, dear good master, if you could only hate ! That is what 
 you are wanting in — hatred ! In spite of your great sphinx 
 eyes, you have seen the world through gold colour. It came
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 267 
 
 from the sun of your heart ; but so many dark shadows have 
 risen, that now you no longer recognise things. Come then, 
 cry, thunder! Take your grand lyre and twang the brazen 
 cord : the monsters will flee. Water us with the drops of the 
 blood of outraged Justice. 
 
 ' Why do you feel " the great ties broken " ? What is broken ? 
 Your ties are indestructible, your sympathy cannot go beyond 
 the eternal, 
 
 ' Our ignorance of history makes us calumniate our own time. 
 We have always been like this. Some calm years have deceived 
 us. That is all. I too believed in the softening of manners. 
 We must erase this error and esteem ourselves no more than 
 people esteemed themselves in the time of Pericles or Shake- 
 speare, atrocious epochs in which fine things were done. Tell 
 me that you lift your head, and that you think of your old 
 troubadour, who loves you. 
 
 ' . . . The mass, the number, is always idiotic. I have not 
 many convictions, but I hold to that strongly. However, the 
 mass must be respected, silly though it be, because it contains 
 the germs of an incalculable fecundity. Give it liberty but not 
 power. 
 
 ' I do not believe any more than you do in class distinctions. 
 Castes belong to archaeology. But I believe that the poor hate 
 the rich, and that the rich are afraid of the poor. That will be 
 so eternally. It is useless to preach love to the one or the other. 
 The most pressing task is to instruct the rich, who, in the end, 
 are the stronger. Enlighten the middle-class man to begin 
 with, for he knows nothing, absolutely nothing. The whole 
 dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of 
 the inanity of the middle-class man. The dream is partly 
 accomplished. He reads the same papers, and has the same 
 pastimes. . . . 
 
 * . . . The romantics will have fine accounts to show with 
 their immoral sentimentality. Do you remember a piece of 
 Victor Hugo's, the Legende des Siecles, where a sultan is saved 
 because he took pity on a pig ; it is always the story of the peni- 
 tent thief, blessed because he repented. It is good to repent, 
 but, better still, to do no wrong. . . . 
 
 ' . . . That will not change so long as universal suffrage re-
 
 268 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 mains what it is. Every man, in my opinion, however low he 
 may be, has a right to one voice, his own, but is not the equal 
 of his neighbour, who may be worth a hundred times as much. 
 In an industrial concern (limited liability company) each share- 
 holder votes according to the value of his contribution. So 
 should it be in the government of a nation. I am quite worth 
 twenty electors of Croisset. Money, intellect, and even birth, 
 ought to be counted — in short, all the forces. Now, up to the 
 present, I only see one, number. Ah ! dear master, you who 
 have so much influence, you ought to bell the cat. . . .' 
 
 TO MADAME ROGER DES GENETTES. 
 
 ' . . . I pledge you to read Renan's last book ; it is very 
 good, that is to say, I agree with it. Have you read the letters 
 of Madame Sand in the Temps ? The friend to whom they are 
 addressed is myself, for we have had a political correspondence 
 this summer. What I said to her is partly to be found in 
 Renan's book. . . .' 
 
 On the 6th of April 1872 Flauberfs mother died. Ten 
 days afterwards he wrote a short letter to George Sand, 
 concluding with these touching words : — 
 
 ' I have perceived during the last fortnight that my poor 
 good old mother was the being I loved best. It is as if part 
 of my very bowels had been torn from me.' It was to her 
 quite as much as to literature that he had given his life ; for, 
 as he had written to George Sand shortly before : ' Litera- 
 ture is not the thing I love most in the world. I explained 
 myself badly in my last letter. I was speaking to you of 
 distractions and of nothing else. I am not such a pedant as 
 to prefer phrases to beings,"* and yet this same mother had 
 complained that ' the love of phrases had dried up his 
 heart.'
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE THREE SHORT STORIES ST. JULIAN THE HOSPITABLE 
 
 The remaining eight years of Flaubert's life were spent in 
 ever-increasing devotion to literary pursuits. One by one the 
 friends who had understood him, who had enjoyed his tur- 
 bulence, shared his enthusiasms, died off, and the void 
 around him made him live more and more inside himself. 
 Theophile Gauthier died early in the autumn of 1872, George 
 Sand in June 1876 ; and though neither of these had ever 
 belonged to the inmost circle of Flaubert's friends, their loss, 
 especially the loss of the latter, was irreparable. George 
 Sand's sedative nature exerted a healthy influence upon ' her 
 old troubadour ' ; she made him to some extent ashamed of 
 his intellectual and nervous irritability ; her sympathy did 
 not, as is too often the case, stimulate the morbid inclina- 
 tions of her friend. 
 
 The cold reception of Bouilhet's posthumous poems, of 
 his last play, 'Mademoiselle Aisse'; the rejection by the 
 theatrical managers of a comedy unfinished by him, which 
 Flaubert worked up, left our poor giant smarting and raw. 
 His declamations against the ' inanity ' of his compatriots, 
 and their ' hatred ' of literature, became from this period 
 savage. He never forgave Levy for not pushing the sale of 
 Bouilhet's Dernieres Chansons. It was through his friend, 
 not through himself, that the public indifference wounded 
 him, and to this we owe his ' revenge,' Bouvard et Peaichet. 
 
 In spite of the sadness of his letters, and their occasional 
 
 269
 
 270 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ferocity, Flaubert was still outwardly the impetuous, eager 
 liver of old. His irritability never degenerated into mere 
 bad temper, and those who had to live intimately with him 
 during the last five years of his life dwelt on his ' tenderness ' 
 as the one distinguishing feature of his character. 
 
 In 1875 M. Commanville lost all his property owing to an 
 unfortunate turn in his business ; his wife, Flauberfs niece, 
 the Liline of his letters, though possessed of property of her 
 own, was not able, owing to the laws regulating doweries in 
 Normandy, to advance her capital to her husband, and 
 Flaubert spontaneously handed over all his own capital to 
 the Commanvilles. Madame Roger des Genettes says of 
 him, ' He gave up d£'48,000 as one gives a thousand crowns.' 
 In return for this he was to live at Croisset, and be allowed 
 an annual income. From this time his niece lived with him 
 at Croisset, or close to him in Paris ; she sat in his study, 
 and became, as Bouilhet had been, the first recipient of the 
 newly-hatched phrases, the audience upon whom everything 
 was tested. Thus his domestic life was not absolutely 
 devoid of alleviations. Further, he found in the Russian 
 TourgeniefF a calm and brotherly friend, whose gentleness of 
 manner was no less pleasing to Flaubert than his accurate 
 scholarship and penetrating judgment. Alphonse Daudet 
 and Zola became literary, if not intimate, friends, and then 
 there was the young Guy de Maupassant, nephew to Alfred 
 le Poittevin, who stirred in Flaubert something of the same 
 feeling which had formerly been roused by Alfred le Poittevin 
 himself and Louis Bouilhet. 
 
 To understand Flaubert it is necessary to know his friend- 
 ships ; he lived in them and in his literature ; that was the 
 man's whole existence outside of his family ; how he respected 
 those claims we have seen. After the death of Louis Bouilhet 
 Flaubert resumed more intimate relations with Ducamp ;
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 271 
 
 everything that Avas associated with his youth became sacred 
 to him as time went on, and though Ducamp evidently con- 
 tinued to be in many ways irritating to him, the two men, 
 the sole survivors of their generation, felt a need of one 
 another. 
 
 The literary work of these last years was first the long- 
 deferred St. Aiithoni/, which after an incubation of thirty- 
 five years was at last reduced to a form in which it could be 
 published ; the first part of Bouvard et Pecucliet, a work 
 which Flaubert regarded as the complement of the ^S*^. 
 Anthony, the Trois Contes, which were written by a sudden 
 inspiration in 1876, though one of them had been for many 
 years in a state of gestation in Flaubert's mind ; and a 
 comedy, ' The Candidate,' which was produced at the Vaude- 
 ville early in 1874, and proved ' a frost,'' though it is excel- 
 lent reading. The characters are too impersonal for dramatic 
 effect, and do not readily lend themselves to the art of the 
 actor, which is another thing from the art of the writer. 
 
 The three stories are the epitome of Flaubert's literary 
 work ; they are not printed in the order in which they were 
 written, which is somewhat unfortunate, as in that one year, 
 1876, Flaubert travelled over the same literary path that his 
 mind had followed in the com-se of his whole life. The first 
 work he planned was, as we have seen, the St. Anthony ; 
 St. Julien V Hospitaller, which was the first written of the 
 three stories, belongs to the epoch of lyricism ; it is a prose 
 chant, reproducing the religious atmosphere of the early 
 Middle Ages ; in it Flaubert makes for once happy use of 
 his love for sounding names, and his intimate acquaintance 
 with strange beasts and legendary monsters. 
 
 As the excessively poetical and fantastic ^S*^. Anthony was 
 succeeded by Madame Bovary, that pitiless analysis of com- 
 monplace middle-class relations, so the Story of a Simple
 
 272 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 Soul followed St. Julien ; it is the life of a good, faithful, 
 narrow-minded servant-girl, who, from the beginning to the 
 end of her life, lives for and is disregarded by others. Strokes 
 of savage satire abound in this short story, and perhaps 
 unduly divert the attention from the pathetic tragedy which 
 is the main subject. 
 
 Then, as if to recompense himself for the self-repression of 
 the Simple Soul, Flaubert sought his next subject in the 
 East, just as Salammbo followed Madame Bovary, and wrote 
 the story of Herodias, a short masterpiece, in which for once 
 he did not allow his archaeology or his love of the grotesque 
 to run away with him. 
 
 It is much to be regretted that Flaubert did not discover 
 the short prose story earlier in life ; for it is the form best 
 suited to his peculiar powers. It represses automatically 
 his worst fault, his tendency to be drawn away from his 
 main subject by side issues, and to overload his plot with 
 details interesting and amusing in themselves, but not neces- 
 sary to the development of the subject, or illustrative of it 
 by contrast ; it demands accuracy and refinement of work- 
 manship, exactly suiting the cadenced prose of which Flaubert 
 was enamoured ; while its special weakness, its tendency to 
 encourage the appeal to the emotions rather than to the 
 intellect, was the one literary pitfall into which Flaubert was 
 physically incapable of straying. 
 
 Of the three stories perhaps the St. Julien is the most 
 characteristic, and a more detailed description of it will be 
 profitable to the reader who wishes to know wherein lay 
 the power which differentiates Flaubert from other powerful 
 writers. 
 
 There are at least three mediaeval saints whose lives and 
 conversions are connected with the chase : St. Hubert, St. 
 Eustace, and St. Julian. When our noble forefathers were
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 273 
 
 not at war, they were hunting. The modern game-laws are 
 directly descended from those stringent mediaeval regula- 
 tions, which forbade to the common man the chase of certain 
 animals : from those forest-laws, whose severity made the 
 death of William Rufus seem to his contemporaries a judg- 
 ment from heaven. A converted sportsman was as attractive 
 to the mediaeval mind as the converted thief and drunkard 
 to the revivalists and Salvation Army of to-day. St. Hubert 
 and St. Eustace were both mighty hunters, who owed their 
 salvation to the apparition of a stag bearing a golden crucifix 
 between his horns. The conversion of St. Julian was effected 
 in another way ; this is how it happened. 
 
 Julian was the son of noble and devout parents, in whose 
 well-fortified castle he was brought up. Soon after his birth 
 his mother had a vision, in which an aged hermit announced 
 to her that her son would be a saint ; at the same time a 
 mendicant mysteriously muttered to his father : ' Thy son — 
 much blood ! — much glory ! — always fortimate, an emperor's 
 family.' The boy was educated in accordance with the 
 prospect of the double destiny ; his mother provided him 
 with monks to instruct him in religion, his father with 
 men-at-arms and huntsmen. 
 
 ' One day during mass, on lifting his head he perceived a 
 little white mouse coming out of a hole in the wall. It tripped 
 upon the first step of the altar, and after two or three turns to 
 the right and left ran away on the same side. The Sunday 
 following he was disturbed by the idea that he might see it 
 again. It came back ; and every Sunday he awaited it, was 
 annoyed by it, was filled with hatred and resolved to do away 
 with it. 
 
 ' Then having closed the door and scattered some crumbs of 
 a cake on the steps, he posted himself before the hole with a 
 wand in his hand. 
 
 'After a very long time the pink nose appeared, then the 
 whole mouse. He struck a light blow, and stood astounded 
 
 s
 
 274 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 before this little body which had ceased to move. A drop of 
 blood stained the flags. He quickly wiped it away with his 
 sleeve, threw the mouse outside, and told nobody.' 
 
 From this time onward Julian was possessed with a rage 
 for killing. His father gave him a pack of homids ; all the 
 instruments of mediaeval sport ; but Julian preferred to 
 hunt by himself with his horse and his hawk, or his dogs. 
 He spent long days in the chase, and ' came back in the 
 middle of the night covered with gore and mud, with thorns 
 in his hair, and with the odour of wild beasts upon him. 
 He became like them. When his mother kissed him he 
 would accept her embrace coldly, seeming to dream of deep 
 things. "" 
 
 One day, having wandered far from home into a wild 
 country, he entered an avenue of great trees like a triumphal 
 arch at the entrance of a forest ; animals of all kinds 
 swarmed around him, and he slew them all ; at last, crowded 
 in a narrow alley, he discovered an immense herd of deer ; 
 they all fell before the bolts of his cross-bow. Night 
 came on. 
 
 ' Julian leaned against a tree. He contemplated with wide 
 eyes the enormity of the massacre, not understanding how he 
 had been able to slay so much. 
 
 ' On the other side of the valley, on the edge of the forest, 
 he perceived a stag, a hind, and her fawn. 
 
 ' The stag, which was black and huge in size, carried sixteen 
 points and had a white beard. The hind, golden as dead 
 leaves, cropped the grass ; and the spotted fawn, without 
 hindering her course, tugged at her teats. 
 
 ' The cross-bow twanged once more. The fawn was killed 
 at once. Then its mother, looking to heaven, cried with a 
 deep, rending human voice, Julian, furious, stretched her on 
 the ground with a shot full in the breast. 
 
 ' The great stag had seen, bounded. Julian despatched his
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 275 
 
 last arrow at him. It hit him in the forehead^ and stayed 
 there. 
 
 ' The great stag seemed not to feel it ; striding over the 
 dead he kept advancing, was going to rush upon him, tear him ; 
 and Julian retreated in an inexpressible terror. The monstrous 
 animal stopped, and with flaming eyes, reverend as a patriarch, 
 and like a judge, three times repeated, while there sounded the 
 toll of a distant bell : " Accm-sed ! Accursed ! Accursed ! One 
 day, savage heai*t, thou shalt slay thy father and thy mother ! " 
 He bent his knees, gently closed his eyelids, and died.' 
 
 Horror seized Julian ; he made his way home possessed 
 with apprehension and dread ; two accidents which seemed 
 likely to bring about the fulfilment of the prophecy so 
 alarmed him that he fled from home. 
 
 Julian joined a troop of soldiers of fortune; soon he 
 became their leader ; his fame spread through the world, 
 he gathered together an army. 
 
 * Turn by turn he aided the Dauphin of France, and the King 
 of England, the Templars of Jerusalem, the Surena of the 
 Parthians, the Negus of Abyssinia, and the Emperor of Calicut. 
 He fought Scandinavians covered with fish-scales, negroes with 
 targets of hippopotamus leather, and mounted on red asses, 
 Indians coloured like gold, and brandishing over their diadems 
 broad sabres brighter than mirrors. He conquered the Troglo- 
 dytes and the Anthropophagi. He crossed countries so scorch- 
 ing that the hair took fire of itself under the burning sun, like 
 a torch ; and others which were so dry that the arms dropping 
 from the body fell to the ground ; and lands where there was 
 so much mist that one walked surrounded by phantoms.' 
 
 Eventually he rendered such a service to the Emperor of 
 Occitania that he gave him his daughter in marriage. 
 
 Julian forswore the chase as being likely to bring down 
 the curse, though his dreams were haunted by strange 
 animals, and he became so melancholy that his wife inquired 
 
 and learned the reason of his sorrows. She encouraeed him 
 
 o
 
 276 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 to resume his old amusement; his parents must by this 
 time be dead. 
 
 One night JuHan was disturbed in his prayers by the 
 barking of a fox under the window ; he heard light steps ; 
 he looked out and seemed to see the forms of animals in 
 the dusk. 
 
 The temptation was too strong ; he took down his quiver 
 from the peg and went out. 
 
 He had scarcely gone before an old man and an old woman 
 arrived at the castle bent with years and fatigue ; they were 
 his father and mother, who had been seeking their son for 
 years through the world. The Princess accepted their proofs, 
 waited on them, laid them to sleep in her own bed. 
 
 Meanwhile Julian had wandered far ; the beasts which 
 had disturbed him were gone ; he entered a forest ; then a 
 plain ; then sandhills ; and at last he came to a high table- 
 land, which was a place of tombs. Hyaenas came round 
 him, and then fled from him. In a ravine he found a bull ; 
 his spear broke upon it, as though the animal had been of 
 bronze. Filled with shame he re-entered the forest ; it was 
 full of the eyes of animals, which watched him ; he shot at 
 them in vain ; became furious with rage, turned homewards ; 
 then all the beasts formed a circle round him ; he pressed 
 forward ; they made way, then followed him ; crowded on 
 his footsteps ; they seemed to ridicule him, to be certain of 
 some vengeance. 
 
 At last the cock crew ; day broke ; and he recognised the 
 roof of the palace above the orange-trees. 
 
 ' Then at the edge of a field he saw, only three steps off, some 
 red-legged partridges fluttering in the stubble. He unclasped 
 his mantle, flung it over them like a net ; when he uncovered 
 them he found only one ; and it had been long dead, rotten. 
 
 ' This deception exasperated him more than all the others.
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 277 
 
 His thirst for carnage came upon him again ; beasts failing him, 
 he would have liked to massacre men/ 
 
 Returning to his palace, and entering his own chamber, 
 he saw two forms on the bed ; one was a bearded man ; 
 filled with a furious jealousy, he slew both. The curse was 
 accomplished. 
 
 The next day Julian fled from the palace after exhorting 
 his wife to pray for his soul. 
 
 He begged his way over the world ; when he told his 
 story all fled from him ; even the animals avoided him. 
 
 ' He sought the solitudes. But the wind brought to his ear 
 sounds like the death-rattle ; the dew tears dropping on the 
 ground reminded him of other drops of heavier weight. The 
 sun every evening spread blood upon the clouds ; and every 
 night his crime was renewed in his dreams.' 
 
 At last he came to a river where there was a ford so 
 dangerous that for a long Avhile no one had dared to cross. 
 An old boat lay half-buried in the mud among the reeds. 
 Julian discovered a pair of oars in it, and the idea occurred 
 to him to spend his existence in the service of others. 
 
 He built with his hands two piers on either strand, 
 repaired the boat, and made himself a little hut on the 
 shore with dried mud and stems of trees. 
 
 Thus he lived for long, tortured by the heat of the day, by 
 the cold of the night, by the bites of poisonous insects, living 
 on the alms grudged by those whom he ferried over the water. 
 
 ' One night, when he was sleeping, he thought he heard 
 some one call. He listened and could only hear the roaring of 
 the waves. 
 
 ' But the same voice repeated " Julian." It came from the 
 other side, which, considering the breadth of the river, seemed 
 to him marvellous. 
 
 'A third time there was a call, "Julian." And this deep voice 
 had the tone of a minster bell. 
 
 'Having lighted his lantern he went out of the hut. A
 
 278 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 furious hurricane filled the night. The darkness was deep, 
 here and there rent by the whiteness of leaping waves. 
 
 ' After a moment's hesitation Julian untied the rope. Im- 
 mediately the water became calm, the craft glided over it and 
 touched the other bank, where a man was waiting. 
 
 ' He was wrapped in a ragged cloth, his face like a plaster 
 mask, and his eyes redder than coals of fire. On placing the 
 lantern near him Julian perceived that he was covered with a 
 hideous leprosy ; still there was in his attitude as it were a 
 king's majesty. 
 
 ' As soon as he entered the boat, it sank prodigiously, 
 crushed beneath his weight ; it rose with a jerk, and Julian 
 began to row. 
 
 ' At each stroke of the oar the surging waves lifted it in 
 front. The water, blacker than ink, coursed furiously past the 
 gunwales, it sank into bottomless hollows, lifted itself into 
 mountains ; and the shallop leapt over them, then plunged 
 into depths, where it revolved, the sport of the winds. 
 
 'Julian flung himself forward, straightened his arms, and 
 making a buttress of his legs and feet, thrust himself back with 
 a convulsive motion of the body to increase his strength. The 
 hail lashed his hands, the rain poured down his back, the force 
 of the wind strangled him ; he stopped. Then the boat drifted 
 away down stream. But understanding that he had to do with 
 something out of the ordinary, with an order which he could not 
 fail to obey, he took up the oars again ; and the regular beat of 
 the rowlocks broke the howling of the storm. 
 
 ' The little lantern burned in front of him. Birds fluttering 
 past hid it from time to time. But he never ceased to see the 
 eyeballs of the leper who stood in the stern, immoveable as 
 a column. That lasted a long while, a very long while ! 
 
 ' When they had reached the hut Julian closed the door, 
 and he saw him seated on the stool. The kind of shroud that 
 covered him had fallen to his hips ; and his shoulders, his chest, 
 his thin arms were barely to be seen under folds of scaly pustules. 
 Enormous wrinkles fuiTowed his forehead. He had a hole in 
 the place of his nose, like a skeleton ; and his blue lips gave 
 forth a putrid breath, thick like a mist. 
 
 ' " I am hungry ! " he said.
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 279 
 
 ' Julian gave him what he possessed — an old scrap of bacon, 
 and the crusts of a black loaf, 
 
 ' When he had devoured them, the table, the dish, and the 
 handle of the knife had the same patches that wei'e to be seen 
 on his body. 
 
 ■ Then he said, " I am thirsty ! " 
 
 ' Julian went to fetch his pitcher ; and as he took it there 
 came a scent from it which opened his heart and his nostrils. 
 It was wine ; what a windfall ! But the leper stretched out his 
 arm, and at one gulp emptied the jug, 
 
 ' Then he said, " I am cold ! " 
 
 ' Julian lit a bundle of brushwood in the middle of the cabin 
 with his taper. 
 
 ' The leper came to warm himself by it ; and squatting on 
 his heels, he trembled in all his limbs, sank ; his eyes no longer 
 burned, his sores flowed, and in an almost inaudible voice he 
 murmured, " Thy bed ! " 
 
 ' Julian gently helped him to drag himself to it, and, to cover 
 him, even stretched the sail of his boat over him. 
 
 ' The leper moaned. In the corners of his mouth his teeth 
 gleamed, a rapid rattle shook his chest, and at each breath his 
 belly sank to his back-bone. 
 
 ' Then he closed his eyes. 
 
 ' " I have, as it were, ice in my veins ! Come and lie 
 by me ! " 
 
 ' And Julian, drawing back the sail, lay close to him on the 
 dead leaves, side by side. 
 
 ' The leper turned his head. 
 
 ' " Take off thy garments, that I may enjoy the warmth of 
 thy body !" 
 
 'Julian took off his clothing; then, naked as on the day of 
 his birth, he took his place again in the bed, and he felt the 
 skin of the leper against his thigh colder than a serpent, and 
 rougher than a file. 
 
 ' He tried to comfort him, and the other replied, gasping : 
 
 ' " Alas, I am going to die ! Come near me, warm me ! Not 
 with thy hands ! But with thy whole body." 
 
 ' Julian stretched himself entirely over him, mouth to mouth, 
 breast to breast.
 
 280 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' Then the leper strained him to his heart ; and his eyes sud- 
 denly took the brightness of stars ; his hair spread out like the 
 rays of the sun ; the breath of his nostrils became as the sweet- 
 ness of roses ; a cloud of incense floated up from the hearth ; 
 the waves began to sing. A hugeness of delight, a joy more 
 than human, descended like a flood into the soul of Julian in 
 his ecstasy ; and he, whose arms enfolded him, was growing, 
 growing, touching the one wall of the cabin with his head, with 
 his feet the other. The roof was lifted off", the firmament 
 unfolded : and Julian rose into the blue depths, face to face 
 with our Lord Jesus Christ, who was carrying him to heaven. 
 
 * That is the story of St. Julian the Hospitable, such nearly as 
 it is to be found on a stained-glass window in my own country.' 
 
 As the St. Anthony was suggested by Breughel's picture 
 at Genoa, so a window in the cathedral at Rouen was the 
 germ of this legend ; which is written with the fullest 
 realisation of the mental condition of the Middle Ages, 
 when the map of the world was not, and fabulous monsters 
 and equally fabulous monarchs were the food of the every- 
 day imagination. Once or twice the irrepressible satirical 
 tendency asserts itself, but not so as to jar, and for once 
 Flaubert's prodigious learning is skilfully used, skilfully, 
 because it is necessary to reproduce the mediaeval atmo- 
 sphere ; and though Maxime Ducamp derides Flaubert for 
 having read all the ancient books of venery in order to 
 write a page or two of this story, the laboui" was not wasted. 
 The tale would have sold as well, would possibly have been 
 read more, had its author been content to be superficial ; 
 but then it would not have shown, as it assuredly does show, 
 ' the lion's claw.'
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 LETfERS TO GEORGE SAND HER DEATH 
 
 During these last eight years there are many bright pas- 
 sages in the letters, and many suggestive passages in spite of 
 the prevailing tone of melancholy or irritation. Flaubert 
 tells George Sand, on the 12th of July 1872, ' I have just 
 read Dickens''s Pickwick. Do you know it ? There are 
 superb passages in it ; but what a defective composition ! 
 All the English writers have this fault, except Walter Scott ; 
 they want plan. That is unendurable to us Latins.'' We 
 may be prepared to pocket our national pride and accept the 
 indictment, but what an exception ! — Walter Scott, who 
 began Guy Mannering with one intention and ended it in 
 another sense, without taking the trouble to change the 
 beginning ; who incorporated in his later novels stories heard 
 over the wine the evening before ! 
 
 It was at this time that Flaubert began to write to 
 George Sand under the name of the Pere Cruchard (Juggins 
 again), Director of the Ladies of Disillusion. 
 
 There are some striking passages in a letter written in 
 October 1872 to George Sand on the occasion of the death 
 of Theophile Gauthier : — 
 
 * . . . Although foreseen, the death of poor Theo has over- 
 whelmed me. He is the last of my intimate friends to depart. 
 He closes the list. Whom shall I see now when I go to Paris } 
 
 281
 
 282 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 with whom talk of what interests me ? I know some thinkers, 
 at least people who are styled such, but an artist ! Where is 
 there one ? 
 
 ' I tell you that he died of the modern " carrion." That was 
 his own phrase ; and he repeated it a thousand times to me this 
 winter : " I am dying of the commune." 
 
 ' The fourth of September inaugurated an order of things in 
 which people such as he have no longer any place in the world. 
 One must not ask orange-trees for apples. The artists in luxury 
 are superfluous in a society in which the people is dominant. 
 
 * How I regret him ! He and Bouilhet are absolutely want- 
 ing to me, and nothing can replace them. He was so good too, 
 and whatever people may say, so simple. Later on it will be 
 recognised, if people ever come back to concei*n themselves 
 with literature, that he was a gi'eat poet. Meanwhile he is a 
 totally unknown author. So is Pierre Corneille. 
 
 ' He had two hatreds : the hatred of shopkeepers in his youth, 
 that gave him talent ; the hatred of the cad in his mature age, 
 that last killed him. He died of suppressed fury, of wrath at 
 not being able to say what he thought. He was swept down 
 by Girardin, Fould, Dalloz, and by the first Republic (1848). I 
 tell you that because / have seen abominable things, and because 
 I am perhaps the only man to whom he imparted his confid- 
 ences in full. He was wanting in what is the most important 
 thing in life for one's self and for others, character. To have 
 missed the Academy was to him a terrible grief. What feeble- 
 ness ! How little he must have thought of himself! The 
 quest of any honour whatever seems to me, moreover, an act of 
 incomprehensible modesty.' 
 
 Theophile Gauthier was a poor man, and had to support 
 a large family as best he could by journalism; he did not 
 always find it easy to accommodate himself to the taste of 
 his editors. His private life was irreproachable, but it is 
 difficult to forgive him such work as Mademoiselle de 
 Maupin. 
 
 George Sand at this time frequently urged Flaubert to 
 marry ; his answer was generally to the same effect : —
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 283 
 
 ' As for living with a wife, marrying, as you advise me, the 
 prospect seems to me fantastic. Why ? I am sure I don't 
 know. But that is how it is. Explain the problem. The 
 feminine has never been dove-tailed into my existence ; and 
 then I am not rich enough, and then, and then ... I am too 
 old . . . and then too decent to inflict my person on another 
 to all eternity. There is an ecclesiastical basis in me which is 
 not recognised.' 
 
 Two years later he writes : — 
 
 * What you say to me of your dear little ones has moved me 
 to the bottom of my soul ! Why is that not mine ? Yet I was 
 born with the capacity for all tenderness. But one does not 
 make one's destiny, one submits to it. I was a coward in my 
 youth, / 7vas afraid of life ! Everything gets its reward.' 
 
 Flaubert on other rare occasions alluded to his 'fear of 
 life,"* and this has been understood as a reference to his 
 epileptic tendency ; but there is no occasion to restrict the 
 significance of the remark. There are men who shrink from 
 marriage, not from a want of tenderness, but from an excess ; 
 who have too vivid an imagination for its responsibilities, 
 who cannot face the interference with other ties, the probable 
 interruption to pursuits and pleasures, to what they believe 
 to be the serious business of their lives. We have not all 
 of us the happy hardness of Hotspur, and his contemptuous 
 indifference to his wife's anxieties. 
 
 The first mention of Guy de Maupassant, who was born 
 just before Flauberfs return from his eighteen months of 
 Eastern travel, is in a letter to de Maupassant's mother, 
 dated October 30th, 1872 : ' Your son is right to love me, 
 for I feel a real friendship for him. He is intellectual, well 
 read, charming, and then he is your son, he is the nephew 
 of my poor Alfred.' 
 
 Allusion has before been made to Flaubert's wrath against
 
 284 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 Levy the publisher ; this is how he speaks of it to George 
 Sand : — 
 
 ' Do not vex yourself about Levy ! and do not let us talk any 
 more about him. He is not worthy to occupy our thoughts for 
 a moment. He has wounded me deeply in a sensitive place — 
 the memory of my poor Bouilhet ! That is irreparable. I am 
 not a Christian^ and the hypocrisy of pardon is impossible to me. 
 I have only not to have anything to do with him again. That 
 is all. I even wish never to set eyes on him more. Amen. 
 
 ' Do not take the exaggerations of my furibundity too seriously. 
 Do not go and think that I " count on posterity to avenge me 
 for the indifference of my contemporaries.'' 
 
 ' All I intended to say was this : when a man does not address 
 himself to the crowd, it is only just that the crowd should not 
 pay him. That is political economy. Now I maintain that a 
 work of art (worthy of that name, and executed with conscience) 
 is beyond valuation, has no commercial value, cannot be paid 
 for. Conclusion — if the artist has no private income, he must 
 die of hunger ! People think that the writer, because he no 
 longer receives a pension from the great, is much more free, 
 more noble. His whole social nobility now consists in not being 
 the equal of a grocer. What an advance ! As for me, you tell 
 me : " Let us be logical," but that is just the difficulty. 
 
 ' I am not at all sure of writing good things, or that the book 
 I am now thinking of (Bouvard et Pecuchel) can be well done ; 
 which, however, does not prevent me from undertaking it. I 
 think that the idea of it is original ; no more than that. And 
 then, as I hope to spit into it the bile which is choking me, 
 that is to say, to emit some truths, I hope in this way to purge 
 myself, and be more Olympian afterwards, a quality in which I 
 am absolutely deficient. Ah ! How I would like to admire 
 myself ! ' 
 
 The work of collecting facts for Bouvard et Peciichet went 
 on steadily in spite of failing health and other interruptions ; 
 at one time Flaubert was reading chemistry, at another 
 agricultural hand-books, medicine, political philosophy, etc. 
 etc., and still found time to laugh at himself occasionally : —
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 285 
 
 ' If my frightful cold goes on^ my stay here (in Paris) will be 
 useless ! Am I going to become like that Canon of Poitiers of 
 whom Montaigne speaks, who for thirty years had not gone out 
 of his room " by reason of the incommodity of his melancholy," 
 and who none the less was in excellent health, " save for a 
 rheum, which had fallen upon his stomach." ... In the matter 
 of reading I have just swallowed the whole of the odious Joseph 
 de Maistre. Surely that gentleman has been pretty fairly in- 
 flicted upon us ; and to think of the modern socialists who have 
 preached him up ! beginning with the Saint Simonians, and 
 ending with A. Comte. France is drunk with authority, what- 
 ever one may say. Here is a fine idea that I find in Raspail : 
 the doctors ought to be magistrates in order that they may be able 
 to force, etc., etc' 
 
 Writing to Madame Roger des Genettes, he says of 
 George Sand that she is 'an excellent woman, but too 
 angelical, too benedictory,'' and again protests against the 
 sacrifice of justice to mercy : — 
 
 'Talking of justice, I have recently paid my lord Levy three 
 thousand francs out of my own pocket for the Demiei-es 
 Chaiisons ; and the said child of Jacob has just been decorated. 
 God of the Jews, thou conquerest ! 
 
 ' You will think this very childish, but I have taken off my 
 Star, I no longer wear the Cross of the Legion of Honour, and 
 I have begged one of our common friends to invite me to dinner 
 with Jules Simon in order that I may howl at His Excellency 
 over this matter. And this will come to pass. I always keep 
 the promises that I make to myself.' 
 
 To George Sand, from Croisset : — 
 
 ' I am not like M. de Vigny ; I do not like the sound of the 
 horn from the depths of the wood. For two hours an idiot 
 planted in the island opposite me has been doing me to death 
 with his instrument. The abominable wretch spoils the sun- 
 shine for me, and deprives me of the pleasure of tasting the 
 summer, for it is glorious weather now, but I am bursting with
 
 286 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 rage. However, I would like to have a little chat with you, 
 dear master. 
 
 ' And first, all hail ! your seventieth year, which seems to me 
 more robust than the twentieth of another ! What an Herculean 
 constitution you have ! To bathe in a frozen river is a proof of 
 strength which simply flattens me, and is the indication of a 
 fund of health comforting to your friends. Live long ! Take 
 case of yourself for the sake of your dear little girls, for good 
 Maurice, for me too, for everybody, and I would add for litera- 
 ture, were I not afraid of your proud disdain. 
 
 * There now ! Good ! the horn again. It 's maddening. I 
 long to go and fetch the policeman. 
 
 ' No, I do not share your disdain, and I am perfectly ignorant 
 of what you call " the pleasure of doing nothing." As soon as 
 I have no longer a book on hand, or am not thinking of writing 
 one, I am seized by a boredom which makes me shout. In a 
 word, life seems to me tolerable only when one juggles it away. 
 Or perhaps one should give one's self up to disorderly pleasures 
 . . . and then ! 
 
 ' . . . He seems to be quieting down. I breathe again.' 
 
 On another occasion Flaubert begs a friend to travel with 
 him, because he was so bored by having nothing to do alone 
 in the carriage ; ' the other passengers think there is a dog 
 in trouble in the train, but it is only M. Gustave Flaubert 
 relieving his feelings."* 
 
 The necessity of submitting ' The Candidate ' to the censure 
 elicited the following axiom : ' All governments hate litera- 
 ture, power does not like another power."" 
 
 ' The Candidate "* failed on the stage ; ' it was a frost, if 
 ever there was one"'^ Flaubert was really much cast down, 
 but wrote to George Sand after the first representation : — 
 
 ' As for Cruchard, he is calm, very calm ! He had dined well 
 before the performance, and supped still better afterwards. 
 Menu, two dozen Ostend oysters, a bottle of champagne iced, 
 three slices of roast beef, a truffle salad, coffee, and brandy 
 thereto. His religion and his stomach sustain Cruchard.'
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 287 
 
 He was still more annoyed by the critics than by failure. 
 
 ' Villemessant reproaches me for not having got myself killed 
 by the Prussians. It is enough to make one sick. And you 
 wish me not to notice human folly, and to deprive myself of the 
 pleasure of depicting it. But the comic is the sohtary consola- 
 tion of virtue.' 
 
 The excitement of bringing out ' The Candidate ' told 
 severely on Flaubert's nerves, and he consulted a doctor, who 
 recommended a Swiss town. 
 
 ' Did I tell you that I should go this summer and set up my 
 nerves at Saint Moritz .'' It is in accordance with the advice of 
 Dr. Hardy, who calls me an hysterical old woman, " Doctor," 
 I said to him, " you are perfectly right." 
 
 ' The good folk of Rouen, my brother included, spoke to me 
 of the failure of "The Candidate " in a hushed voice, and with an 
 air of contrition, as if I had gone through the assizes for a for- 
 gery. Not to succeed is a crime, and success is the criterion of 
 good. I think this grotesque to the last degree. Explain to me 
 why mattresses are spread under some falls, and thorns under 
 others ? (This particular letter is signed R. P. Cruchard. More 
 Cruchard than ever.) I feel myself doting, flabby, worn-out, 
 sheik, deliquescent, lastly calm and controlled, which is perhaps 
 the concluding term of decadence.' 
 
 Flaubert's last work was begun early in August 1874. 
 On the 28th of July he writes to Guy de Maupassant : ' I 
 shall be back at Croisset on Friday evening, and on Saturday 
 I begin Bouvard et Pecuchet ! I tremble before it, as on the 
 eve of embarking on a journey round the world.' Six years 
 later the book was still being written ; and no wonder ! 
 Flaubert read and annotated fifteen hundred volumes in 
 order to produce the four hundred octavo pages which he 
 had all but completed when he died. The hard work told 
 on him severely from the beginning; and then he was no
 
 288 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 longer free from pecuniary anxieties after his generous emu- 
 lation of King Lear. 
 
 In the spring of 1875 he says to George Sand : — 
 
 ' The reason why I so rarely write to you now, is that I do not 
 wish to bore you with my complaints ; for nobody has a stronger 
 conviction than myself of my own insupportability. . . . 
 
 ' . . . I send kisses to you all, above all to you, dear master, 
 so great, so strong, so gentle. Your Cruchard more and more 
 cracked, if cracked is the right word, for I feel my contents 
 escaping.' 
 
 Writing to Zola in August 1875 he says, after announcing 
 the commercial failure of M. Commanville, but not mention- 
 ing his own generosity : — 
 
 * My existence is now completely upset ; I shall always have 
 something to live upon, but imder other conditions. As for 
 literature I am incapable of any work. In about four months 
 (during which we have been in hellish anxiety) I have written 
 fourteen pages in all, and those bad ones. My poor brain will 
 not stand such a blow. That seems to me quite clear.' 
 
 But in three months' time he was at work on the short 
 stories. 
 
 His last letter to George Sand was written in the year of 
 her death, but is only dated ' Sunday evening, 1876 "* ; it is 
 chiefly concerned with a review of her story Flamarande. 
 He expresses strongly in it one of his favourite axioms : — 
 
 ' As for letting my personal opinion of the characters that I 
 bring on to the stage be seen ; no, no — a thousand times no ! I 
 do not recognise my right to do so. If the reader does not 
 draw from a book the morality that ought to be in it, the reason 
 is that the reader is a fool, or the book is false in the point of 
 accuracy. For the moment a thing is true it is good. Obscene 
 books even are only immoral because they want truth. Things 
 do not go on in that way in life. And observe that I hate what 
 it is agreed to call realism, although I am made one of its 
 pontiffs ; settle that for me.'
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 289 
 
 On the 19th of June 1876, writing to Madame Roger des 
 Genettes, he says, after describing the plot of ' A Simple 
 Soul ' :— 
 
 ' The story is by no means ironical^ as you suppose, but on the 
 contrary very serious, and very sad. I wish to stir compassion, 
 to make sensitive souls weep, being one myself. Alas ! Yes ! 
 last Saturday at the funeral of George Sand I broke out into 
 sobs, on kissing little Aurora, and then on seeing the coffin of 
 my old friend.'
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 LETTERS TO GUY DE MAUPASSANT AND OTHERS 
 
 In October of this year Flaubert had a great treat, a visit 
 from his old friend Mrs. Tennant, the Gertrude Collier of the 
 Trouville days ; and he continued to correspond with her to 
 the end of his life. Afterwards he wrote to her : — 
 
 ' How I long to see you ! What a number of things I 
 should have to tell you, sitting alone with you over the fire ! 
 Do you know what I call you in my innermost heart, when I 
 think of you (and it often happens) .'' I call you "my youth." ' 
 
 Madame Roger des Genettes was his correspondent-in- 
 chief at this time ; but his letters even to her have less and 
 less of the old personal touch ; there is a great deal more of 
 criticism upon contemporary literature, and less of the old 
 humour. Occasionally we have such outbursts as : ' The 
 inanity of mankind does actually so overwhelm me that I 
 feel like a fly with the Himalayas on its back. Never mind. 
 I will try to spue out my venom into my book. This hope 
 comforts me.' 
 
 Many of the letters are filled with requests for detailed 
 information on some geographical or historical fact likely to 
 be useful to Bouvard et Pecuchet ; Flauberfs sensitiveness of 
 conscience on the question of accuracy increasing rather than 
 diminishing with age. And meanwhile the ' indignation of 
 St. Polycarp ' also increased rather than diminished : — 
 
 * Anacharsis Cloots used to say : "I belong to the party of in- 
 dignation." I am getting to resemble him ; don't you think so ? 
 
 290
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 291 
 
 He was for the rest a queer fellow, and I have a weakness for 
 him. When he was guillotined he wished to pass after his com- 
 panions, in order to have time to confirm certain principles ! 
 What principles ? I have no idea whatever, but I admire this 
 fancy. 
 
 ' Here are two verses recently brought into the world by an 
 Academician of Rouen, which I think splendid : 
 
 " We always are happy, to deny it 's no good. 
 When we see ourselves first in our own neighbourhood." ' 
 
 The author of this beautiful couplet was no less a person 
 than M. Decorde, the poetical member of the Town Council 
 of Rouen, who found that Louis Bouilhet was not great 
 enough to be honoured with a monument. Flaubert says, 
 writing to Guy de Maupassant : — 
 
 ' What do you say of these two verses, my boy ? I beg you 
 to meditate upon them carefully ; then to declaim them with 
 the appropriate emphasis, and you will spend a good quarter of 
 an hour.' 
 
 The rest of this same letter contains some good advice : — 
 
 'You complain of women who are "monotonous." The 
 remedy is very simple, — do without them. " Events have no 
 variety." That is a realistic complaint, and besides, what do you 
 know about it .'' Perhaps you might look into them a little 
 more closely. Have you ever believed in the existence of 
 things ? Is not everything an illusion } There is nothing true 
 but " relations," that is to say the fashion in which we perceive 
 objects. "Vices are shabby," but everything is shabby! 
 " There are not sufficient turns of phrase." Look for them and 
 you will find them. 
 
 ' Lastly, my dear friend, you have to me the air of being 
 thoroughly bored, and your boredom afflicts me, for you might 
 employ your time more profitably. You must — do you hear, 
 young man? — you imist work more than that. I begin to have an 
 idea that you are not very seriously hard-handed. Too many 
 wenches, too much rowing, too much exercise ! Yes, sir ! The 
 civilised man has not such a great need of locomotion as our
 
 292 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 friends the doctors insist. You were born to make verses; 
 make them. "All the rest is vanity," to begin with, your 
 pleasures, and your health ; there — stuff that into your nut. 
 Besides, your health will be all the better if you follow your 
 vocation. This remark is of profound philosophy, or rather 
 hygiene. . . . 
 
 ' ... In a word, my dear Guy, beware of sadness. It is a 
 vice ; one takes a pleasure in being dismal, and when the dis- 
 mal fit is over, as it has used up precious forces, one remains 
 dulled by it. Then, one is sorry for it ; but it is too late. 
 Trust to the experience of a sheik to whom no extravagance is 
 strange.' 
 
 Flaubert was often ready with a compliment to England : — 
 
 ' Do you read the works of Herbert Spencer } That is a 
 man, and a real positivist ! A rare thing in France, whatever 
 people say. Germany has nothing to compare to this thinker. 
 For the rest the English seem to me enormous. Their attitude 
 in the Eastern question has been superb in its impudence and 
 skill.' 
 
 Talking of Dupanloup, Flaubert says : — 
 
 * His book upon the higher studies is of a very common 
 order of intellect. He was a country parson, nothing more. 
 His funeral oration upon Lamoriciere seems to have been 
 written by a bagman turned verger.' 
 
 And in fact in 1879 he recovered his spirits to some 
 extent ; for example : — 
 
 ' And does not the funeral of Villemessant (editor of the 
 Figaro) make you think } Embalmment, as if of a Pharaoh, mass 
 said by a bishop, the station transformed into a "chapelle 
 ardente," " and return of the ashes " to Paris, and the day after, 
 speech, plumes, music, immense crowd, I am sure of it. He 
 enjoyed "an immense publicity " : let us bow ! I never bowed^ 
 I never bent my knee before that institution. 
 
 ' And Pinard, my enemy Pinard (the counsel for the prosecu- 
 tion in the action against the author of Madame Bovary), the 
 author of the obscene couplets found in the praying stool of
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 293 
 
 Madame Gras, Pinard, who invented Gambetta (to do the 
 Empire a good turn), — this excellent M. Pinard communicating 
 last Sunday at Notre Dame in the company of his grace the 
 Duke de Nemours ! Farce ! Farce ! ' 
 
 Again we find him joking against himself in writing to 
 Edmond de Goncourt : — 
 
 ' Here is my statement. My leg is better (he had broken 
 it) ; however, it swells every evening, I can hardly walk more 
 than a hundred yards, and I have to wear a bandage round my 
 ankles. 
 
 ' Further, I have had one of my last grinders pulled out. 
 
 ' Further, I have had lumbago. 
 
 ' Further, a stye in my eye. 
 
 'And as a matter of fact, since yesterday I rejoice in a pimple 
 plump in the middle of my countenance. Apart from all that I 
 am very well.' 
 
 The reading for Bouvard et Pkuchet as a rule proved irri- 
 tating : — 
 
 ' Cups of bitterness are not grudged to your old friend, and 
 I am reading stupid or rather stupefying things ; the religious 
 tracts of Monseigneur de Segur, the lucubrations of Pere 
 Huguet, Jesuit, Bagnevalt de Puchesne, and that excellent M. 
 Nicholas, who takes Wolfenhuttel for a man (because of the 
 Wolfenbiittel fragments), and consequently he thunders against 
 Wolfenbiittel. Modern religion is something ineffable decidedly, 
 and Parfait in his Arsenal of Devotion has only skimmed the 
 matter. In the Manual entitled " Pious Domestics" what do 
 you say to this title for a chapter : Of modesty during great Heat ? 
 Then advice to maids not to take service with actors, innkeepers, 
 and vendors of obscene engravings ! Those are some flowers ; 
 and the idiots declaim against Voltaire, who is a spiritualist, and 
 Renan, who is a Christian. O inanity ! O infinitude ! I shall 
 have some trouble in my ninth chapter. Religion, to keep my 
 balance. My pious readings would make a sinner of a saint.' 
 
 Apparently Madame Roger des Genettes, to whom these
 
 294 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 remarks were addressed, did not find them altogether to her 
 taste, for in the next letter to her there is an explanation : — 
 
 ' You did not understand the spirit of my indignation : I am 
 not astounded at people who try to explain the incomprehen- 
 sible, but at those who think they have found its explanation, 
 those who have " le bon Dieu," or rather " le non Dieu," in 
 their pockets. Certainly — yes ! all dogmatism exasperates me. 
 In short, Materialism and Spiritualism seem to me two impertin- 
 ences. 
 
 ' Recently, after having read no small number of Catholic 
 books, I took up the philosophy of Lefebvre — " the last word of 
 science " ; it is only fit to be thrown into the same latrines. 
 That is my opinion. All ignorant creatures, all humbugs, all 
 idiots, who never see more than one half of a whole : and I have 
 re-read (for the third time in my life) all Spinoza. That 
 " atheist " was in my opinion the most religious of men, because 
 he admitted nothing but God. But just try and make our 
 friends the ecclesiastics and the disciples of Cousin understand 
 that ! ' 
 
 Guy de Maupassant having published some verses in a 
 periodical was in danger of being prosecuted for immorality 
 before the tribunal of Etampes, and further of losing the 
 Government clerkship which he held. Flaubert was at once 
 ready with advice, and as usual, when any person"'s business 
 but his own was in question, showed no less activity than 
 skill in manipulating the different personages, whose influence 
 was likely to be useful in diverting the calamity from the 
 devoted head of his young friend. Among other things, he 
 wrote him a letter, with leave to publish it in the Gaulois, 
 which as it incidentally deals with the whole question of the 
 obscene in literature, is worth quoting at length : — 
 
 'Croisset,' February 19th, 1880, 
 
 ' My dear good fellow, — Then it is true ? At first I thought 
 it was a joke ! But no. I bend. Well, they are nice people
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 295 
 
 at Etampes. Are we going to be subject to all the tribunals in 
 French territory, the colonies included ? How happens it that 
 a piece of verse, formerly inserted in a Parisian periodical which 
 no longer exists, is prosecuted on being reproduced in a provin- 
 cial journal, to which you probably never granted permission, 
 and of whose existence you were doubtless ignorant ? To what 
 are we forced now ? What must one write ? How must one 
 publish ? In what a Bceotia do we live ? 
 
 * Accused of" an outrage to morals and public morality," — two 
 amiable synonyms, which form two counts in the accusation ! I 
 had a third outrage laid to my account, " and religious morality," 
 when I appeared before the eighth Chamber with Madame 
 Bovary, — an action which proved a gigantic advertisement for 
 me, and to which I attribute three-fourths of my success. 
 
 ' In short, I can't understand it at all ! Are you the victim of 
 some personal grudge ? There is something inexplicable 
 beneath it all. Are they paid to debase the Republic as cur- 
 rency by making contempt and ridicule rain upon it ? I believe 
 so. 
 
 ' That you should be prosecuted for a political article, good ; 
 although I defy all the courts of justice to show me the practical 
 utility of it. But for verses, for literature — no ; that is too strong. 
 
 ' They will reply to you that your poetry has obscene tenden- 
 cies ! With the theory of tendencies one might have a sheep 
 guillotined for dreaming of mutton. We should come to a 
 definite understanding about this question of morality in the 
 State. What is beautiful is moral, — there is the whole thing, and 
 nothing more. 
 
 * Poetry, like the sun, gilds the dunghill. So much the worse 
 for those who do not see it. You have treated a commonplace 
 to perfection, and you deserve laudation instead of deserving a 
 fine and inprisonment. 
 
 ' " The whole talent of an author," says La Bruyere, " consists 
 in defining well, and painting well." You have defined and 
 painted well. What more does one want } "But the subject," 
 Prudhomme will object, "the subject, sir ! Two lovers. A wash- 
 tub ! The bank of a river. You should have taken a waggish 
 tone, treated it more delicately, with more subtlety, marked it
 
 296 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 in passing with a point of elegance, and made a venerable 
 ecclesiastic or a good doctor come on to the scene at the end, 
 and deliver himself of a lecture upon the dangers of love. In a 
 word, your story invites to the union of sexes. Ah ! " 
 
 ' In the first place, it does not invite, and even if it were so, 
 in this time of amorous refinements, it is not a bad thing to 
 preach the worship of women. Your poor lovers do not even 
 commit an adulteiy ! They are free, both of them, " without 
 obligations to anybody." Struggle as you may, the party of 
 order will find arguments. Be resigned. 
 
 ' But denounce, in order that they may be suppressed, all the 
 Greek and Roman classics without exception, from Aristophanes 
 to Horace the good and Virgil the tender. Then, among 
 foreign authors, Shakespeare, Goethe, Byron, Cervantes. 
 Among ourselves, Rabelais, "from whom French literature 
 springs," according to Chateaubriand, whose masterpiece turns 
 upon an incest ; and then Moliere (see the rage of Bossuet 
 against him) ; the great Corneille, the motive of his Theodora is 
 prostitution ; and further, La Fontaine, and Voltaire, and Rous- 
 seau, etc., and the fairy tales of Perrault ! What is the subject 
 of Peau d'ane ! and where does the fourth act of Le Koi s amuse 
 take place .-' 
 
 ' After that it will be necessary to suppress the history books, 
 which soil the imagination. I choke with indignation. 
 
 ' (Who will get a surprise .'' Friend Bardoux ! He whose 
 enthusiasm on reading your poem was so great that he wished 
 to make your acquaintance, and soon after placed you in his 
 office. Justice treats her proteges well !) 
 
 'And that excellent Voltaire (not the man, the periodical) 
 which was joking me genteelly the other day on the bee in my 
 bonnet, my belief in the hatred of literature ! It is the Voltaire 
 that is mistaken. More than ever I believe in the unconscious 
 hatred of style. When one writes well, one has two enemies to 
 face : first the public, because style forces it to think, obliges it 
 to work ; second, the government, because it feels a force in us, 
 and power loves not another power. 
 
 ' Government may change, monarchy, empire, republic, it 
 matters little. The official aesthetics never change. In virtue 
 of their place, its agents — administi-ators and magistrates — have
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 297 
 
 the monoply of taste (see the terms of my acquittal). They 
 know how one ought to write, their rhetoric is infalHble, and 
 they possess the means of convincing. 
 
 'You were rising to Olympus, your face flooded with sun- 
 beams, your heart full of hope, breathing in the beautiful, the 
 divine, half into lightsome heaven — and a pohceman's paw flings 
 you back into the gutter ! You were conversing with the Muse, 
 and you are taken for one of those who corrupt little girls. All 
 perfumed with the waves of Permessus, you will be confounded 
 with those gentlemen who haunt urinals for pleasure. 
 
 ' And you will take your seat, my young friend, on the felon's 
 bench, and you will hear an individual read your verses (not 
 without faults of prosody), and read them again, laying stress 
 upon particular words to which he will give a distorted signifi- 
 cance. He will repeat some of them several times, like citizen 
 Pinard : " The leg, gentlemen, the leg," etc. 
 
 ' While your advocate will make a sign to you to control your- 
 self — a word might ruin you, — you will vaguely feel behind you 
 all the police force, all the army, all the power of the public 
 weighing on your brain with an incalculable weight ; then there 
 will mount into your heart a hatred which you do not suspect, 
 with plans of vengeance, arrested at once by pride. 
 
 ' But, once again, it is not possible. You will not be pro- 
 secuted, you will not be sentenced. There is a misunderstanding, 
 a mistake, something or other. The keeper of the seals will 
 intervene. 
 
 'We are no longer in the glorious days of M. de Villele. And 
 yet, who knows ? The world has its limits, but human inanity 
 has no bounds.' 
 
 In this letter there is one of Flauberfs curious slips of 
 memory ; it was not the eighth but the sixth court before 
 which he appeared. 
 
 It is pleasant to see from the following letter that the 
 clouds did not settle down unbroken upon Flauberfs closing 
 days, and that he found in Guy de Maupassant something of 
 the outlet for his tenderness, which his older friends had 
 given him : —
 
 298 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' My dear good fellow, — I do not yet know on what day 
 Goncourt, Zola, A. Daudet, and Chai-pentier will come here to 
 lunch, dine, and perhaps sleep. This very evening they are to 
 come to a decision, and I shall know on Friday. I think Monday 
 will be the day on which I shall receive them. Then, if your eye 
 permits it, transport your person to one of the said "cocos," 
 ascertain the date of their departure, and come with them. 
 
 ' Supposing all to spend Monday night at Croisset, as I have 
 only four beds to offer, you will take that of the ladies' -maid, 
 now absent. 
 
 ' Comment : so many inanities and improbabilities have come 
 upon me in connection with your illness, that I should be much 
 relieved for my own part, for my own personal satisfaction, to 
 have you examined by my doctor Fortin, a mere "officier de 
 sante,'' whom I consider very good, 
 
 ' Another observation : if you have not the coin to make the 
 journey, I have a fine double louis at your service. A refusal 
 from delicacy would be utter vulgarity in dealing with me. 
 
 ' Last string : Jules Lemaitre, to whom I have promised your 
 recommendation to Graziani, will present himself at your office. 
 He has talent, and is a real " literary man," rara avis, to whom 
 a bigger cage should be given than Havre. 
 
 ' Perhaps he will come to Croisset on Monday ; and as it is my 
 intention to make you all drunk, I have invited Fortin to lavish 
 his cares on the sick. 
 
 ' The festival will miss some splendour if I do not have my 
 disciple. — Your old friend.' 
 
 Two later letters to the same person illustrate Flaubert"'s 
 method in working up Bouvard et Peaichet, and the latter 
 one incidentally indicates the point of view from which that 
 work should be read : — 
 
 ' I have received Baudry's letter, which answers none of my 
 questions. (I am beginning to ask myself whether I am mad !) 
 But to make up for that he gives me advice upon the art of 
 writing. " Why do you concern yourself with Botany, which 
 you don't know ? You expose yourself to a mass of errors, which 
 will be none the less absurd for being involuntary. There is no
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 299 
 
 good comedy in this line of ideas except that which is premedi- 
 tated ; that which the other has made in spite of himself is comic 
 all the same, but quite in another way ! " etc. 
 
 ' Savour the daintiness of this raillery. Attic, is it not } 
 
 ' And he reproaches me with ranking the tuberoses among the 
 liliaceae, when I have exerted myself to tell him that Jean 
 Jacques Rousseau classed them thus, and he informs me that 
 " in roses the ovary is hidden beneath the petals," the very phrase 
 of the letter which I sent him. 
 
 ' I replied, that I begged his pardon, at the same time de- 
 manding a little indulgence. Never mind. To believe me 
 a prion incapable of giving a piece of information supplied by 
 others, and, secondly, to judge me charlatan enough to raise a 
 laugh at my own expense, is pretty hard. Study this fact ; it 
 seems to me big with pyschology ; and I return to my hobby : 
 "the hatred of literature." You have read 1500 volumes to 
 write one. That does not matter. From the moment that you 
 know how to write, you are not serious, and your friends treat 
 you like a street boy. I do not conceal the fact that I think 
 this " wicked." 
 
 ' I will get through with it all alone, even if I have to spend 
 six years over it, for I am mad about it. But try through your 
 professional friends to unearth me a botanist ; it would save me 
 a lot of time. My love to you ! Your old friend in a state of 
 exasperation beyond describing.' 
 
 ' No ! that is not enough, although it is already better. The 
 anemones (in the family of the ranunculacese) without calyx, 
 very good. But why has Jean Jacques Rousseau said (in his 
 Botany), "most of the liliaceee are without it" ? This "most " 
 signifies that certain liliaceae want it. The said Rousseau, not 
 being a scientific man, but an observer of "nature," may per- 
 haps have made a mistake ! Why and how ? In short, I must 
 have an exception to the rule. I already have it with certain 
 ranunculaceae, but, secondly, I want an exception to the excep- 
 Jion, a piece of mischief which is suggested to me by the "most" 
 of the citizen of Geneva. 
 
 ' Of course, I do not cling to any particular family, provided 
 the plant is common. . . .'
 
 300 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 The evening before his death, Madame Commanville 
 received a letter announcing the speedy conclusion of his 
 book, and ending with these words : — 
 
 ' I ivas right ! I have my information from the Professor of 
 Botany of the Jardin des Plantes ; and I was right, because 
 eesthetic is truth, and because up to a certain intellectual point 
 (when one has method) one does not make mistakes, reality does 
 not bend to the ideal, but confirms it. I had to make three 
 journeys into different districts to find the right setting for 
 Bouvard et Pecuchet, the environment peculiar to the action. 
 Ah, ah ! I triumph — that is a success, and I am flattered by it.' 
 
 On the 8th of May 1880, as Flaubert was dressing, he fell 
 down unconscious ; in a few moments he was dead ; and the 
 passengers on the steamer from Rouen to la Bouille thence- 
 forward looked in vain for that queer M, Flaubert, who used 
 to stand in his dressing-gown at the window of the old house 
 at Croisset.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 ' BOUVARD ET PECUCHET "* 
 
 Flaubert died when the last chapter of the first part of Bou- 
 vard et Peaicliet was but half finished ; the first third of it 
 was already in its complete form, and of the remaining two- 
 thirds, the skeleton, a remarkably fleshy skeleton, was already 
 in existence. The notes only for the second part of the 
 book, with their classification, were complete. Thus the 
 work as it stands is unfinished, and has not been revised by 
 its author ; still, the fragment is all but perfect in itself, and 
 it is highly improbable that the second part would have 
 proved equally readable with the first. 
 
 Bouvard et Pecuchet is the work which places Flaubert 
 among the gods ; if he had never written that book he might 
 have been classified as a writer of strong but clumsy romances ; 
 a man of great genius, but somehow ineff'ective ; a man who 
 had never fomid the right form in which to deliver his message, 
 or who had only found it in the form of three short stories ; 
 but this book exactly suits his peculiar temperament, his 
 peculiar powers ; it is as individual and distinctive as Faust 
 is of Goethe, Frederick the Great of Carlyle, Henri/ IV. of 
 Shakespeare, Don Quixote of Cervantes, Pantagruel of 
 Rabelais. 
 
 It is in this particular that the really great writers reveal 
 themselves ; they write works which nobody else could pos- 
 sibly have written. Their works may be unpleasing, full of 
 
 301
 
 302 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 defects (generally of excess), more or less without form, in- 
 comprehensible to the general public, unable to be squeezed 
 into the shape recognised by any school of criticism, and yet, 
 there they are. Generation after generation of literary 
 artists goes to these works and draws some mysterious 
 strength from them ; while the general public talks of them 
 with respect, but never reads them. 
 
 Such works are not unfrequently satirical in their first 
 intent ; their Avritcrs have studied _^^the literature and the 
 men of their day, and found them wanting ; even where a 
 criticism is not stated, it is often implied. Rabelais and 
 Cervantes, sometimes under disguises, sometimes openly, pour 
 contempt on the opinions of their contemporaries ; Shake- 
 speare abounds in parody, in demonstrations of the ineffective- 
 ness of self-complacent humanity ; Carlyle''s laugh only gives 
 way to his far less pleasing declamation. Again, it is the 
 universally applicable satire that lives ; the satire which 
 nevertheless seemed to be only of temporary application. All 
 the other Greek comic poets are gone, but we still have Ai'is- 
 tophanes ; and yet nothing apparently could be more local 
 than his jokes. Would Plato'^s philosophy have preserved 
 his works without his wit, and his endless parody on his con- 
 temporaries ? Mere learning, accurate reasoning, perfection 
 of method, — none of these alone or in combination are enough 
 to insure the perpetuity of a deeply thoughtful work ; it 
 seems as if to secure immortality the personification of ideas 
 is a first necessity. Ideas change, but the human attitude 
 towards them is always the same. Gorgias and Phaedrus 
 will always live, because their attitude towards knowledge is 
 a permanent attribute of humanity ; there will always be 
 kindly, self-complacent old men believing that virtue can be 
 taught, and willing to teach it ; there will always be ardent 
 young men unable to distinguish between your true man
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 303 
 
 and your windbag, and lost in admiration of the last 
 University Extension lecturer that they have encountered. 
 Further, it is not your mere dramatist who lives ; it is the 
 dramatist who places his characters in connection Avith the 
 big subjects. Tragedies and comedies of everyday life, how- 
 ever well they may be written, do not make permanent im- 
 pressions ; each generation makes them for itself, and prefers 
 its own to any other. The world of forgotten plays ! — what 
 a universe ! — from the authors of the middle and new 
 comedy onwards ! And the novels of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, those that are read by Tom, Dick, and Sal — what a 
 limbo for the twentieth century to peep into ! Few people 
 reflect upon the vast quantity of literature that has practi- 
 cally passed away, where one book has survived. A library 
 is an appalling necropolis ; crowded with the dead, the dying, 
 and a few semi-revivable corpses. 
 
 The literary man is always interested in studying the 
 problems of the human mind ; the intellectual difficulties of 
 man always concern him. It is by the literary man pre- 
 eminently that permanence is given to an author ; and so 
 the permanent books are mostly books which deal with man 
 in his relation to the infinite, the permanent, not the 
 ephemeral problems. The more a man has learned the 
 more he requires ; as his experience improves his discrimina- 
 tion improves, his power of enjoyment improves, and those 
 who can in all ages satisfy his educated demands, please his 
 advanced taste, are the imperishable giants of literature. 
 
 When we are very young we like hymn-tunes sung by our 
 mother, and the popular airs of the barrel-organ ; the finest 
 performance by Richter's orchestra of a symphony of 
 Beethoven is to us an indistinguishable medley of sound ; 
 but, if we have the good fortune to hear much music, the 
 barrel-organ becomes unendm'able to us, the hymn valuable
 
 304 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 only for non-musical associations, but oh ! what a paradise 
 of delight is the symphony ! 
 
 Thus it is with literature ; the student grows to require 
 better and yet better work, and to recognise it when it is 
 presented to him ; all but the best seems trivial. 
 
 So strong is our interest in the relations of man to the 
 infinite that we even read an allegory into mere narrative. 
 The Homeric poems were not regarded by learned Greeks 
 as being only stories of fighting, or the celebration of the 
 deeds of heroic ancestors ; there were those who saw in them 
 as many mystic allusions as have been discovered in the 
 Song of Solomon. Virgil in the Middle Ages was either a 
 saint or a magician ; and it would be impossible to enumer- 
 ate the works which deal with the inner significance of the 
 historical books of the Hebrews. To the whole of Dante 
 there is a threefold interpretation. No man has ever yet 
 discovered all that lurks beneath the sui'face of the second 
 part of Faust. 
 
 Of books of this kind Bouvard et Pecuchet is perhaps the 
 only one whose author"'s mind is perfectly open to us. We 
 possess the key, and know that we have to do with some- 
 thing more than a farcical story. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 Flaubert was writing Bouvard et Pecuchet all his life. We 
 have seen how, in his very first letter, he proposed to a 
 school-fellow to write comedies, in which would be repeated 
 all the silly things that a lady who visited his father''s house 
 was in the habit of saying ; and his other letters give abmi- 
 dant indications of the serious view which he took of the 
 inanity of his fellow-creatures. As early as 1850 he was 
 contemplating a Dictionary of Accepted Opinions. 
 
 The plot of Bouvard et Pecuchet is very simple ; two clerks,
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 305 
 
 middle-aged men (they are each delighted to find that the 
 other is forty-seven), meet accidentally and strike up a warm 
 friendship. The most trivial of coincidences is the fomidation 
 of their friendship ; happening to seat themselves on the 
 sam_e bench on the Boulevard Bourbon, they take off their 
 hats, and discover that they both have the habit of writing 
 their names inside them. 
 
 In spite of their similarity of tastes the men soon to be 
 united in the bonds of warmest friendship are really dissimi- 
 lar. Bouvard is stout, florid, a widower, fond of indecent 
 stories, discourses cynically of women, and hitherto his chief 
 friend has been one Barberou, an ex-bagman, who is expert 
 in tricks with billiard-balls : Pe'cuchet, on the other hand, is 
 thin ; owing to the extreme length of his nose, his face 
 seems all profile ; he is a bachelor, a prig, somewhat nig- 
 gardly, but of an insatiable curiosity, and up to this time 
 he has chiefly admired a Professor Dumouchel, who also 
 claims rank as an author, having produced a memoria technica. 
 
 They get into the habit of walking out together, of visiting 
 all the museums ; Avhen they go to the botanical gardens 
 they admire the cedar, because it was brought over in a hat. 
 At the library they would like to know the exact number 
 of the volumes. When they see an old piece of furniture, 
 they regret not having lived at the period when it was 
 made, though they are absolutely ignorant of the date of 
 that period. In short, they are the people for whom the 
 Beefeaters at the Tower of London and the vergers of our 
 Cathedrals provide information. Some of them go to Rome, 
 and even further. 
 
 As their intellects become more active, they develop an 
 increasing dislike to office-work. One day Bouvard received 
 a letter ; his putative uncle, really his father, has died, and 
 left him ten thousand pounds !
 
 306 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 For two years the friends waited, and then, when Pecuchet 
 had earned his retiring pension in the Admiralty they endea- 
 voured to reahse what had become the dream of their Hves. 
 They bought a house and small estate in the country 
 between Caen and Falaise, in a village called ChavignoUes, 
 and there they settled. 
 
 This is the environment which Flaubert sought for so 
 carefully. 
 
 On the first night of their arrival in their new home their 
 very sleep was characteristic : ' Bouvard slept on his back 
 with his mouth open, his head bare ; Pecuchet on his right 
 side, his knees in his stomach, coddled in a cotton night-cap, 
 and both snored under the moonbeams that came in through 
 the windows."' 
 
 The notables of the village were the Comte de Faverges, 
 formerly a deputy, whose fatuity was quoted ; the mayor 
 M. Foureau, who sold wood, plaster, all kinds of things ; the 
 lawyer, M. Marescot ; the doctor, M. Vaucorbeil ; the Abbe 
 Jeufroy, and the Widow Bordin, who lived on her private 
 income. 
 
 The friends at once plunged into gardening and farming ; 
 with the results, which usually wait on amateurs, who derive 
 their experience solely from books, and embark recklessly 
 upon experiments suggested by the last faddist. They tried 
 to manufacture liqueurs, all kinds of alimentary preserves ; 
 their failure led them to the conclusion that they ought to 
 study chemistry. 
 
 In the person of the two friends Flaubert then begins 
 his examination of the popular text-books of science. His 
 method of suggesting criticism and ' the want of method 
 in the acquisition of knowledge ■" is very well illustrated by 
 the following quotation. It should be noted that he does 
 not criticise the chemical text-book as a chemist, but as a
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 307 
 
 person who, wishing to learn chemistry and consulting a 
 text-book, finds that the text-book is either self-contra- 
 dictory or gives information which is after all no informa- 
 tion. And" it is in this way that he deals with all the 
 sciences which are reviewed in this book : the satire being 
 directed sometimes against the carelessness or ineptitude of 
 the authorities ; sometimes against the attitude of mind in 
 which their statements are accepted by the learner. 
 
 ' In order to learn chemistry they procured Regnault's course, 
 and learned first that simple bodies are perhaps compound. 
 
 ' They are divided into metalloids and metals — a distinction 
 in which there is nothing absolute, says the author. In the 
 same way for acids and bases ; a body being able to behave like 
 an acid or a base according to circumstances ! 
 
 ' The notation seemed fantastic to them. The multiple pro- 
 portions confused Pecuchet. 
 
 ' " Since one molecule of A, I suppose, is combined with 
 several particles of B, it seems to me that this molecule must 
 be divided into as many particles ; but if it is divided, it ceases 
 to be a unity, the primordial molecule. In short, I don't under- 
 stand it." 
 
 ' " Neither do I ! " said Bouvard. 
 
 ' And they had recourse to a less difficult work, that of 
 Girardin, from which they acquired the certainty that ten litres 
 of air weigh ten grammes, that there is no lead in lead-pencils, 
 that the diamond is nothing but carbon. 
 
 ' WTiat astonished them above all is that the earth as an 
 element has no existence.' 
 
 Getting into difficulties with their chemistry, they went to 
 Vaucorbeil, the doctor, and asked for an explanation of ' the 
 higher atomicity."' He did not give it ; thundered against 
 the baneful influence of chemistry upon medical science. 
 The sight of his diagrams suggested to Pecuchet the study 
 of anatomy ; he borrowed the manual of Alexander Lauth, 
 and learned the divisions of the frame. They were amazed
 
 308 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 at the dorsal column, ' which is sixteen times stronger than 
 if the Creator had made it straight. Why precisely sixteen 
 times ? ' 
 
 They then bought a papier-mache model, wKich arrived 
 from Paris in a long coffin-like box, and excited the curiosity 
 of the village ; they were credited with the possession of a 
 real corpse, and the mayor came in person to inspect, semi- 
 officially. What 'right had they, not being physicians, to 
 be in possession of such an object ? He wrote to the Pre- 
 fect. Bouvard and Pecuchet derived some comfort from 
 reflecting on their own superiority ; they yearned to suffer 
 for science. 
 
 Meanwhile the doctor derided them, but continued to 
 lend them books. They became interested in exceptional 
 developments, unusual physiological phenomena. ' Why had 
 they not known that mayor of Angouleme, whose nose 
 weighed three pounds ? "■ 
 
 Anatomy naturally led to physiology ; they tried experi- 
 ments to prove — ' 1, That the weight of a man is decreasing 
 every minute ; 2, that animal heat is developed by muscular 
 contractions, and that it is possible by agitating the thorax 
 and the pelvian extremities to raise the temperature of a 
 warm bath.' 
 
 While they were thus engaged in the wash-house, Pecuchet 
 naked in the scales, Bouvard equally naked in the bath, a 
 strange dog came in, proved at first impervious to blandish- 
 ment, then ran off with Pecuchet''s trousers, which it sat on. 
 Eventually it proved amenable, and was then used for experi- 
 ments disapproved of by the Antivivisection Society, all of 
 which failed. 
 
 Other similar experiments were equally unsuccessful, and 
 at last, having discovered that Borelli assigns to the heart 
 sufficient strength to lift a weight of 180,000 pounds, while
 
 LIFE OF GUST AVE FLAUBERT 309 
 
 Keill estimates it only at eight ounces, they came to the 
 conchision that physiology is the romance of medicine, and 
 gave it up. 
 
 They then came across the Medical Manual of Raspail, 
 the clearness of whose medical doctrine seduced them : ' All 
 diseases come from worms. They spoil the teeth, devour the 
 lungs, expand the liver, ravage the intestines, and produce 
 noises in them. The best cure for them is camphor.' 
 
 (This Raspail was called in to the deathbed of Caroline 
 Flaubert.) 
 
 Bouvard and Pecuchet at once became apostles of camphor. 
 They happened to cure Madame Bordin of a small ail- 
 ment, and from that time ran the usual course of amateur 
 physicians. 
 
 They soon began to imagine themselves ill ; and before 
 long their ideal was ' Cornaro the Venetian nobleman who 
 by means of a regime attained to an extreme old age."* 
 
 The study of hygienic manuals caused them to wonder 
 how they had ever contrived to live so long. 
 
 ' All meats have inconveniences. The pudding and the 
 sausage, the red herring, the lobster, and game are " refrac- 
 tory." The bigger a fish is, the more gelatine it contains, 
 and consequently the heavier it is. Vegetables cause acidity, 
 macaroni gives dreams, cheeses, " considered generally, are 
 difficult of digestion." A glass of water in the morning is 
 " dangerous." Each drink or comestible being followed by a 
 similar warning, or the words, " bad — beware of the abuse of 
 it — does not suit everybody." Why bad ? In what does the 
 abuse consist ? How know if such a thing suits you } ' 
 
 What a problem breakfast is ! They gave up coffee with 
 milk on account of its detestable reputation, and then choco- 
 late, 'for it is a mass of indigestible substances.'' There 
 remained tea. ' But nervous persons should forswear it
 
 310 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 entirely.*' However, Decker in the seventeenth century pre- 
 scribed twenty decalitres a day to clean out the pancreas. 
 
 This piece of information shook their confidence in Morin, 
 the more that he condemns every form of headdress, hats, 
 bonnets, and caps, a pretension revolting to Pecuchet. 
 
 Then they bought Becquerel's treatise, in which they saw 
 that ' the pig is in itself a good form of food,' ' tobacco 
 perfectly innocent,' and coffee ' indispensable to military men.'' 
 
 Up to that time they had believed in the unwholesome- 
 ness of damp places. Not at all ! Casper declares them 
 less deadly than others. One does not bathe in the sea 
 without invigorating one's skin. Begin declares that one 
 should jump into it in full perspiration. Wine taken neat 
 after soup is said to be excellent for the stomach. Levy 
 charges it with damaging the teeth. Lastly, the flannel 
 vest, that safeguard, that protection of health, that pal- 
 ladium beloved by Bouvard, and inherent to Pecuchet 
 without any subterfuges or dread of adverse opinion what- 
 ever, is by some authors pointed at as dangerous to men of 
 a plethoric and sanguine temperament. 
 
 What then is hygiene ? 
 
 ' Truth this side of the Pyrenees, error beyond," affirms 
 M. Levy, and Becquerel adds that it is not a science. 
 
 Then they ordered for their dinner oysters, a duck, pork 
 and cabbages, cream, a Pont-rEveque cheese, and a bottle of 
 Burgundy. It was an emancipation, almost a revenge, and 
 they derided Cornaro ! One must be imbecile to let one- 
 self be tyrannised over as he was. What contemptible 
 baseness to be always thinking of lengthening one's life ! 
 Life is only good if it is enjoyed. 
 
 * " Another piece ? " 
 ' " Certainly." 
 ' " I too ! "
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 311 
 
 ' " To your health ! " 
 
 ' " To yours ! " 
 
 ' " And let us snap our fingers at everything ! " ' 
 
 They became excited. 
 
 Bouvard announced that he wanted three cups of coffee, 
 even though he was not a military man. Pecuchet, his cap 
 over his ears, took pinch after pinch of snuff and sneezed 
 fearlessly ! 
 
 After this repast the friends repaired to the garden to 
 take their coffee, and, as the evening was a fine one, soon 
 lost themselves in admiration of the stars ; this led them to 
 an astronomical discussion, and then to the Harmonies of 
 Bernardin de Saint Pierre. 
 
 * Harmonies vegetable and ten-estrial, aerial, aquatic, human, 
 fraternal, and even conjugal ; everything was there, not omit- 
 ting invocations to Venus, the Zephyrs, and the Loves. They 
 were lost in admiration because fish had fins, birds wings, seeds 
 a covering, full of that philosophy which discovers virtuous 
 intentions in nature, and considers her like a kind of Saint 
 Vincent de Paul always occupied in bestowing benefactions ! 
 
 ' Then they admired her prodigies, water-spouts, volcanoes, 
 virgin forests, and they bought M. Dupuy's work upon the 
 " Marvels and Beauties of Nature in France." Cantal possesses 
 three of them, Herault five. Burgundy two — no more, while 
 Dauphine reckons to itself alone as many as fifteen wonders.' 
 
 From such studies they easily passed to Buffon and Cuvier ; 
 they began to collect fossils. 
 
 ' One afternoon, as they were turning over some flints on the 
 high road, the Cure passed, and, addressing them in a wheedling 
 voice, said : 
 
 ' " These gentlemen are interested in geology. Very good." 
 
 ' For he had a high opinion of this science. It confirms the 
 authority of the Scriptures by proving the deluge. 
 
 ' Bouvard spoke of coprolites, which are the petrified excre- 
 ments of animals.
 
 312 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' The Abbe Jeufroy seemed surprised at the fact ; after all, 
 if it were so, it was a reason the more for admiring the ways of 
 Providence.' 
 
 The news that an elephant's jaw was said to have been 
 discovered at Villers, and an alligator near Port-en-Bessin 
 at the foot of the cliff, sent them off on a fossil-hunting 
 expedition. Their first unauthorised attack on the cliffs 
 ended in a demand for a passport, and conflict with the 
 local authorities. 
 
 ' Besides a passport, they were in want of many things, and, 
 before undertaking any further explorations, they consulted the 
 Geological Travellers' Guide by Boue. One should have, first 
 of all, one's soldier's haversack, then a surveyor's chain, a file, 
 nippers, a compass, and three hammers, passed into a belt, 
 which is hidden under the overcoat, and thus " preserves you 
 from that appearance of originality which should be avoided on 
 a journey." As stick, Pecuchet adopted with full confidence 
 the tourist's stick, six feet long with a long iron point. Bouvard 
 preferred an umbrella-cane or polybranch umbrella, whose 
 handle can be withdrawn in order to hook on the cover, which 
 is carried separately in a little bag. They did not forget strong 
 boots with gaiters ; each had " two pairs of braces, because of 
 perspiration," and although " one cannot present one's self 
 everywhere in a cap," they shunned the expense of " one of 
 those folding hats which bear the name of the hatter Gibus, 
 their inventor." 
 
 ' The same woi-k gives precepts for conduct : " To know the 
 language of the countries to be visited " ; they knew it. " To 
 preserve a modest behaviour" ; it was their custom. " Not to 
 have too much money about one " ; nothing simpler. Lastly, 
 to avoid all kinds of difficulties it is good to adopt the " qualifi- 
 cation of engineer." 
 
 '"Well, we will adopt it." ' 
 
 An expedition to Fecamp, though the travellers were thus 
 admirably equipped, nearly ended in disaster ; for Pecuchet 
 discoursed so eloquently of the possibility of a sudden cata-
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 313 
 
 clysm, whereby the shores of England should be united to 
 those of France, that Bouvard, who had eaten nothing all 
 day, hearing a rumbling of stones from the cliff, concluded 
 that the period of the catastrophe had already arrived, and 
 fled in terror along the shore. 
 
 Then they began the study of geology. 
 
 ' From biographies and extracts they learnt something of the 
 doctrines of Lamarck and GeofFroy Saint-Hilaire, 
 
 ' All that was contrary to the received views, to the authority 
 of the Church. 
 
 ' Bouvard felt as it were the alleviation of a broken yoke. 
 
 ' " I should like to see now what answer citizen Jeufroy would 
 give me about the deluge ! " 
 
 ' They found him in his little garden, where he was waiting 
 for the members of the Church Maintenance Committee, w^ho 
 were to meet immediately to consider the purchase of a 
 chasuble. 
 
 '"These gentlemen require.'^" 
 
 '"An explanation, if you please." 
 
 ' And Bouvard began : — " What did these expressions in 
 Genesis mean, ' The depths that are broken up,' and ' the 
 cataracts of Heaven ' } For a depth is not broken up, and 
 Heaven has no cataracts." 
 
 * The Abbe closed his eyelids, then replied that it was always 
 necessary to distinguish between the letter and the sense. 
 Things which are shocking to you at first become regxdar if you 
 go to the bottom of them. 
 
 ' " Very good ! But how explain the rain that surpassed the 
 highest mountains, which are two leagues high ! Think of that, 
 two leagues ! A thickness of two leagues of water ! " 
 
 * And the Mayor coming up added : " Deuce take it ! What 
 a bath!" 
 
 ' " Admit," said Bouvard, " that Moses exaggerates like the 
 devil." 
 
 ' The parson had read Bonald, and replied : — " I do not know 
 his motives ; doubtless it was to inspire the people whom he 
 guided with a wholesome awe !"
 
 314 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' " Lastly, this mass of water, where did it come from ? " 
 
 ' " How should I know ! The air was changed into rain, as 
 happens every day." 
 
 ' Through the garden gate they saw M. Girbal enter, the 
 Superintendent of Taxes, with Captain Heurtaux, a landowner, 
 and Beljambe, the innkeeper, arm-in-arm with Langlois, the 
 grocer, who walked with difficulty on account of his cough. 
 
 ' Pecuchet, without noticing them, took up the woi-d : — 
 
 ' " Pardon me, M. Jeufroy. The weight of the atmosphere — 
 science proves it for us — is equal to that of a mass of water 
 which would make an envelope of nearly eleven yards round 
 the earth. Consequently, if all the air fell down condensed 
 into a liquid form, it would increase the mass of existing water 
 very little.' 
 
 ' And the tradesmen opened their eyes wide, and began to 
 listen. 
 
 ' The Cure got vexed. 
 
 ' " Will you deny that shells have been found upon the moun- 
 tions } What put them there if it was not the deluge .'' They 
 are not in the habit, I suppose, of growing in the earth all of 
 themselves like carrots ! " and this joke having caused the com- 
 pany to laugh, he added, pursing up his lips : " Unless that is 
 another of the discoveries of science ? " 
 
 ' Bouvard wished to reply by the upheaval of mountains, the 
 theory of Elie de Beaumont. 
 
 ' " Not of my acquaintance ! " replied the Abbe. 
 
 ' Foreau hastened to say : " He comes from Caen. I saw him 
 once at the Prefecture." 
 
 "'But if your deluge," resumed Bouvard, "had transported 
 the shells, we should find them broken on the surface, and not 
 at depths of sometimes more than nine hundred feet." 
 
 ' The priest took refuge in the veracity of the Scriptures, the 
 traditions of the human race, and the animals discovered in ice 
 in Siberia. 
 
 ' " That does not prove that men lived at the same time as 
 they." The earth, according to Pecuchet, was considerably older. 
 
 ' " The delta of the Mississippi goes back to tens of thousands 
 of years. The actual epoch is at least a hundred thousand." 
 Manetho's lists . . .
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 315 
 
 ' The Comte de Faverges advanced. 
 
 ' All were silent on his aiTival. 
 
 ' " Go on, pray ! What were you saying ? " 
 
 ' "These gentlemen were finding fault with me," replied the 
 Abbe. 
 
 '"About what?" 
 
 '"About the Holy Scriptures, my lord." 
 
 ' Bouvard at once alleged that they had a i-ight to discuss 
 religion as geologists. 
 
 '"Take care," said the count; "you know the saying, my 
 dear sir — a little science leads from it, a great deal brings back 
 to it." And in a tone at once superior and paternal : " Believe 
 you will come back to it ! You will come back \" ' 
 
 And so the conversation proceeded ; attack and defence 
 being alike conducted inadequately. 
 
 Tired of geology, the friends took to simply enjoying the 
 country ; one day, feeling thirst after a long walk, they went 
 into a public-house, where they bought an old oak chest, and 
 engaged the young servant as a subsidiary domestic, embark- 
 ing in both speculations, to some extent, on the recommen- 
 dation of one Gorju, a vagabond joiner, whose acquaintance 
 they had previously made. 
 
 ' Six months later they had become antiquarians, and their 
 house was like a museum.'' 
 
 Among the obj ects which they cherished were : — 
 
 'Two coco-nuts that had belonged to Pecuchet from his 
 youth up, an earthenware barrel, on which a peasant rode. 
 Then in a straw basket there was a farthing which had been 
 brought up by a duck. 
 
 ' In front of the bookcase stood a shell table with plush orna- 
 ments. Its cover supported a cat holding a mouse in its maw 
 — a petrifaction from Saint-Allyre, a work-box also in shells, and 
 on this box a decanter of brandy contained a bon-chretie7i pear.' 
 
 The rest of the collection was to match, including a 
 butter-pot, bearing in white letters on a chocolate ground :
 
 316 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' Made in the presence of His Royal Highness the Duke of 
 Angouleme at Noron, October 3rd, 184n.'' 
 
 Archaeology naturally led to architecture ; they visited 
 cathedrals, learnt to recognise and protest against ' the de- 
 based ' in style ; from the cathedrals the step to castles and 
 manor-houses was not a long one, and then in due sequence 
 came local traditions and Celtic remains. 
 
 Meanwhile their neighbour, Madame Bordin, a keen 
 woman of business, with a Norman's hunger for land, 
 courted them, Bouvard especially, whose weakness for the 
 sex she proposed to turn to account. She and others visited 
 the museum, and were edified with the spectacle of Bouvard 
 ' doing a monk of the Middle Ages in an attitude of prayer. "* 
 
 Such respectable studies won the favour of the Count him- 
 self, who indicated the existence of a holy-water basin, half- 
 buried in the grass from time immemorial, behind the wall 
 of the cemetery ; this, on being exhumed, was pronounced 
 triumphantly to be a ' druidical bowl "■ by an authority to 
 whom they appealed. 
 
 Stimulated by success, they plunged more and more deeply 
 into Celtic archaeology ; and eventually transported the bowl 
 to their museum by night. They did not, however, escape 
 the eye of the Abbe Jeufroy, who, by protesting against the 
 sacrilege, judiciously contrived to sell them a piece of earthen- 
 ware at an exorbitant price as ' Old Rouen."* 
 
 Celticism, by an easy sequence, introduced nature-worship, 
 and soon everything Bouvard saw was phallic. Meanwhile 
 the Abbe's soup-tureen brought on china-mania, and a sub- 
 sequent disillusionment as to the value of marks on pottery. 
 
 A tour into Brittany was planned ; historical studies were 
 a necessary preliminary ; soon they were deep in the French 
 Revolution. From the difficulty of coming to definite con- 
 clusions about the men of that time, they inferred that it
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 317 
 
 was necessary to know all history. Then came the difficulty 
 of remembering dates, and they began to use the Memoria 
 Technka of Pecuchet"'s friend Dumouchel, with results not 
 altogether happy. 
 
 * To secure greater clearness they took as " memorio-technical 
 base/ their own house, their domicile, associating a distinct fact 
 with each part of it ; and the court, the garden, the outskirts, 
 the whole country, had no longer any significance except as an 
 aid to memory. The hedges in the fields defined certain epochs, 
 the apple-trees were genealogical stems, the bushes battles, the 
 whole world became symbolic. They sought for heaps of things 
 absent from their walls, ending by seeing them, but forgot the 
 dates that they represented. 
 
 ' Pecuchet tried to explain myths, and got lost in the Scienza 
 Niiova. 
 
 ' " Will you deny the design of Providence ? " 
 
 ' " Don't know it," said Bouvard. 
 
 'And they decided to refer to Dumouchel. The professor 
 declared that he was now dead-beat in the matter of history. 
 
 ' " It changes every day. The kings of Rome are contested, 
 and the journeys of Pythagoras ; Belisaiius, William Tell, are 
 attacked, and even the Cid, who, thanks to the most recent dis- 
 coveries, has become a mere bandit. It is to be desired that 
 discoveries should cease to be made, and indeed the Institute 
 should establish a kind of canon prescribing what we ought to 
 believe." ' 
 
 Despairing of their authorities, the two friends determined 
 to write a history of their own, and selected as subject the 
 Duke of Angouleme. 
 
 The result is an excellent parody of the accepted form of 
 biography. The friends went to the library at Caen for 
 information. 
 
 ' When they had taken notes they drew up a programme : — 
 ' Birth and infancy of but little interest. One of the tutors 
 is the Abbe Guenee, the enemy of Voltaire.
 
 318 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' At Turin he is made to cast a cannon, and he studies the 
 campaigns of Charles viii. Also he is, in spite of his youth, 
 named colonel of a regiment of noble guards. 
 
 '1797. His marriage. 
 
 '1814. The English seize Bordeaux. He runs up behind 
 them and shows his person to the inhabitants. Description of 
 the prince's person. 
 
 * 1815. Bonaparte surprises him. All of a sudden he summons 
 the king of Spain, and Toulon, but for Massena, would have 
 been delivered to England. 
 
 ' Operations in the south. He is beaten, but released under 
 the promise of restoring the crown diamonds carried off at full 
 speed by his uncle the king. 
 
 ' After the Hundred Days he returns with his parents, and 
 lives quietly. Several years pass. 
 
 ' The Spanish War. As soon as he has crossed the Pyrenees, 
 victory everywhere follows the son of Henry iv. He carries the 
 Trocadero, reaches the Columns of Hercules, annihilates faction, 
 embraces Ferdinand, and comes back. 
 
 ' Triumphal arches, flowers presented by maidens, dinners at 
 the Prefecture. Te Deu?n in the cathedrals. The Parisians are 
 at the height of intoxication. The town offers him a banquet. 
 Allusions to the hero are sung upon the stage. 
 
 ' The enthusiasm diminishes, for in 1827 a subscription ball 
 at Chei-bourg fails. 
 
 ' As he is High Admiral of France, he inspects the fleet, 
 which is going to sail for Algiers. 
 
 'July 1830. Marmontel informs him of the state of aflairs. 
 Then he flies into such a rage that he wounds his own hand 
 with the general's sword. 
 
 ' The King commits to him the command of all the troops. 
 
 ' He meets detachments of the line at the Bois de Boulogne, 
 and has not a single word to say to them. 
 
 ' From Saint Cloud he flies to Sevres Bridge. Coldness of 
 the troops. That does not shake him. The Royal Family leave 
 Trianon. He takes a seat at the foot of an oak, unfolds a 
 map, reflects, remounts his horse, passes in front of Saint Cyr, 
 and sends words of hope to the students. 
 
 ' At Rambouillet the bodyguards bid good-bye to him.
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 319 
 
 ' He embarks, and is sick during the whole of the passage. 
 End of his career. 
 
 ' One should observe in it the impoi-tant part played by 
 bridges. 
 
 ' First, he exposes himself unnecessarily on the Bridge of the 
 Inn ; he takes the Bridge of the Saint Esprit, and the Bridge of 
 Lauriot ; at Lyons the two bridges are fatal to him, and his 
 fortune expires before the Bridge of Sevres. 
 
 ' Catalogue of his virtues. Useless to vaunt his courage, to 
 which he united deep policy. For he offered every soldier 
 sixty francs to abandon the Emperor, and in Spain he tried to 
 corrupt the constitutional party by money down. 
 
 ' His reserve was so profound that he consented to the mar- 
 riage planned between his father and the Queen of Etruria ; 
 to the formation of a new cabinet after the " ordonnances " ; 
 to the abdication in favour of Chambord ; to everything one 
 wished. 
 
 ' He was not, however, wanting in firmness. At Angers he 
 cashiered the infantiy of the National Guard, which, jealous 
 of the cavalry, and by means of a stratagem, had succeeded 
 in forming his escort, so that His Highness found himself 
 entangled among the privates to the extent of getting his 
 knees squeezed. But he blamed the cavalry, the cause of 
 the disorder; and pardoned the infantry, — a regular judgment 
 of Solomon. 
 
 'His piety was shown by numerous devotions, and his 
 clemency by obtaining the pardon of General Debelle, who had 
 borne arms against him. 
 
 ' Personal details characteristic of the Prince : — At the 
 chateau of Beauregard, in his infancy, he took a pleasure in 
 digging out, along with his brother, a pond, which is still 
 to be seen. 
 
 'Once he visited the barracks of the Chasseurs, asked for 
 a glass of wine, and drank it to the health of the King. 
 
 ' While walking, in order to mark the step, he used to repeat 
 to himself, " One two, one two, one two." 
 
 * Some of his phrases have been preserved. To a deputation 
 from Bordeaux he said: "What consoles me for not being at 
 Bordeaux is to find myself with you ! "
 
 320 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' To the Protestants of Nismes : " I am a good Catholic, but 
 I shall never forget that my most distinguished ancestor was a 
 Protestant." 
 
 ' To the students at Saint Cyr, when all was lost : " Good, 
 my friends ! The news is good ! All is well ! very well ! " 
 
 ' After the abdication of Charles x, : " Since they do not want 
 me, they must settle it between them ! " 
 
 'And in 1814, on every occasion in the smallest villages: 
 " No more war, no more conscription, no more united rights ! " 
 
 ' His style was as good as his word. His proclamations are 
 unsurpassed. 
 
 ' The first of the Comte d' Artois began thus : — " Frenchmen, 
 the brother of your King has arrived ! " 
 
 ' That of the Prince : " I arrive. I am the son of your kings ! 
 You are Frenchmen." 
 
 ' Order of the day, dated from Bayonne : " Soldiers, I 
 arrive ! " 
 
 ' Another, in the midst of defection : " Continue to support, 
 with the vigour which befits the French soldier, the struggle 
 that you have begun. France expects it of you ! " 
 
 ' Last of all, at Rambouillet : " The King has entered into an 
 arrangement with the Government established at Paris, and 
 everything inclines us to believe that this arrangement is on the 
 point of being concluded." " Everything inclines us to believe " 
 was sublime. 
 
 ' " One thing troubles me," said Bouvard, " there is no men- 
 tion of his love-affairs." 
 
 ' And they noted in the margin, " Inquire into the Prince's 
 amours ! " ' 
 
 On their return from Caen they found their household in 
 some confusion ; the famous chest, which was on the point 
 of completion, broken up by a stray cow, according to 
 Gorju ; the said Gorju and the new maid Melie issued sus- 
 piciously from the barn ; the old housekeeper, Germaine, was 
 apparently drunk ; Madame Bordin appeared to be making 
 an inspection of the premises. 
 
 ' We do not know,^ said Bouvard, ' what goes on in our
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 321 
 
 own household, and yet we claim to discover what was the 
 colour of the Duke of Angouleme's hair, and story of his 
 amours.' 
 
 Eventually they decided upon a course of historical novels, 
 as ' History is defective without imagination.' 
 
 Their first delight in Walter Scott was spoiled by the dis- 
 covery that he falsifies the order of events, while Dumas is 
 reckless in his history. 
 
 Pecuchet took to historical plays. 
 
 ' He swallowed two Pharamonds, three Clevises, four Charle- 
 magnes, several Philip Augustuses, a crowd of Jeanne d'Arcs, 
 numerous Pompadours, and conspiracies of Cellamare. 
 
 ' Nearly all seemed to him more inane than the romances. 
 For there is a conventional history for the stage that is inde- 
 structible. Louis XI. will never fail to kneel in front of the 
 figures on his hat; Henry iv. will be for ever jovial; Mary 
 Stuart tearful, Richelieu cruel ; lastly, all the characters are 
 shown in one single mould, from love of simplicity and respect 
 for ignorance ; with the result that the play-writer, instead 
 of elevating, debases, and encourages stupidity instead of 
 knowledge.' 
 
 Other novels proved no more satisfactory than the historical 
 romances ; even Balzac, who wrote a book on chemistry, 
 another on the bank, another on printing-presses, just as 
 one Ricard had done ' the cabman,' ' the water-carrier,' ' the 
 coco-nut seller.' ' We should have them upon all the trades, 
 and all the provinces, then upon all the towns, and the floors 
 of each house, and upon each individual ; and then we shall 
 have literature no longer, but statistics or ethnography.' 
 
 Tragedy and comedy then occupied the attention of the 
 friends ; both seemed false. 
 
 One day Madame Bordin called to return a volume of 
 Pigault-Lebrun which she had borrowed ; Bouvard was 
 reciting ; she begged him to continue. After some passages 
 
 X
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 from Racine and Moliere, addressed to Pecuchet, Bouvard 
 delivered Hernani's apostrophe to Dona Sol ; his eyes met 
 those of Madame Bordin, sentimental relations declared 
 themselves ; Bouvard became more enamoured of the stage 
 than ever, and he and Pecuchet resolved to write plays. 
 Their ambition proved at first greater than their power : 
 and as usual they had recourse to manuals ; before long they 
 thought it advisable to study grammar, and quickly came to 
 the opinion that ' syntax is a fancy and grammar an illu- 
 sion."" They excited themselves over questions of style and 
 taste to such an extent that Pecuchet developed a jaundice. 
 When it was at its height Madame Bordin called ; she 
 wished to buy a meadow of one acre, the lawyer Marescot 
 soon followed her ; shortly afterwards Vaucorbeil the doctor, 
 and no less a person than the Comte de Faverges, armed 
 with political pamphlets, and bearing a novel in his hand 
 which he had confiscated from Melie, discovered reading in 
 the kitchen. 
 
 ' They talked of novels. Madame Bordin liked them when 
 they were not sad. 
 
 ' " Writers," said M. de Faverges, " represent life to us under 
 too glowing colours." 
 
 ' " One must represent ..." objected Bouvard. 
 
 ' " Then one has only to follow the example ..." 
 
 ' " There is no question of example ! " 
 
 ' " At least you will admit they may fall into the hands of 
 a young girl. I have a daughter." 
 
 ' " A charming one ! " said the lawyer, assuming the face 
 which he wore at marriage-contracts. 
 
 ' " Well, for her sake, or rather that of the persons who sur- 
 round her, I forbid them in my house, for the People, my dear 
 sir, the People. . . ." ' 
 
 And so forth ; each of the assembled company contri- 
 buting his share to the indictment against literature, which
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 323 
 
 is a favourite topic with well-meaning people, who have no 
 real love of books. 
 
 * After the departure of the guests they epitomised what 
 they had just heard. The morality of art is contained for each 
 individual in the side which flatters his interests.' 
 
 Part IL 
 
 The Revolution of 1848 drew the attention of the friends 
 to politics ; as trees of liberty were planted in Paris, the 
 Municipal Council of Chavignolles accepted a young poplar- 
 tree from Bouvard, which was with all due ceremony placed 
 at the entrance of the village. 
 
 The Abbe Jeufroy took charge of the function, and made 
 a speech, in which, ' after having thundered against Kings, he 
 glorified the Republic.'' 
 
 ' " Do we not speak of the Republic of letters, the Christian 
 Republic .'' What could be more innocent than the one^, more 
 beautiful than the other ? Jesus Christ gave the form of our 
 sublime device ; the tree of the people was the tree of the 
 Cross. In order that religion may render her fruits, she needs 
 charity," and in the name of charity, the ecclesiastic adjured his 
 brethren not to commit any disorder, to return home peace- 
 fully.' 
 
 All were charmed with the speech and the ceremonial ; 
 however, it was not long before the workmen began to sing 
 the Marseillaise, Gorju in their midst, and the recently 
 appointed Schoolmaster Petit at their side. Foureau, the 
 mayor, began to see visions of the guillotine. 
 
 Soon everybody began to think of being a deputy, from 
 Gorju upwards. The captain dreamed of it under his 
 policeman\s cap, while smoking his big pipe, and the school- 
 master also in his school, and the parson between two
 
 324 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 prayers, insomuch that he sometimes surprised himself with 
 his eyes turned to Heaven, in the act of saying : — ' Grant, 
 O God, that I may be made a deputy ! ' 
 
 Bouvard and Pecuchet were infected with the same fever, 
 but while they were still undecided as to which of them had 
 the better claim, the election was carried by a newspaper 
 editor from Caen. 
 
 Then the reaction began. Gorju and his friends appeared 
 before the Municipal Council and demanded work. The 
 Mayor trembled, his voice failed him ; and none of his col- 
 leagues showed any greater presence of mind. At last, word 
 was send to the deputation that shops of charity were being- 
 prepared. 
 
 ' Charity ? Thank you ! ' cried Gorj u. ' Down with the 
 aristocrats ! We want the right to work."" 
 
 Pecuchet eventually appeared on the scene, and attempted 
 to make a speech, but was removed with some risk of per- 
 sonal violence, from which he was rescued by Gorju. Pere 
 Gouy, the tenant who farmed for Bouvard, interpreted the 
 ' right to work "* after a fashion of his own, and proceeding to 
 Madame Bordin's garden with a cart-load of manure, pro- 
 ceed to dig up her lawn. Bouvard intervened in defence of 
 the widow, who retained the manure as compensation for 
 damage done. 
 
 The public workshops only lasted a week. Gorju went 
 away. The National Guard began to display great activity, 
 little discipline and no courage. A few weeks later, they 
 arrested a man who was found lurking about the place with 
 a gun, and who proved to be Gorju in a state of complete 
 destitution. He was sent to prison, hurt, because Pecuchet 
 did not interfere on his behalf. 
 
 On the 10th of December all the inhabitants of Chavi- 
 gnolles voted for Bonaparte.
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 325 
 
 ' The six millions of votes chilled Pecuehet's affection for the 
 People, — and he and Bouvard studied the question of universal 
 suffrage. 
 
 ' Belonging to evei-ybody, it must be devoid of intelligence. 
 One ambitious man will always guide it, the others will follow 
 like a flock, the electors not being obliged even to know how to 
 read : that is why, according to Pecuchet, there was so much 
 dishonesty in the election of the President. 
 
 ' " None whatever," replied Bouvard ; " I incline rather to 
 believe in the folly of the People. Think of all those who buy 
 quack medicine ! These fools form the bulk of the electors, 
 and we submit to their will. Why can one not make an annual 
 income of three thousand francs out of rabbits ? Because too 
 close crowding is a cause of death. In the same way, by the 
 mere fact of the existence of a crowd, the germs of inanity 
 which it contains are developed, and incalculable consequences 
 are the result." ' 
 
 Soon after this the trees of liberty were generally uprooted. 
 ' Bouvard saw with his own eyes the fragments of his poplar 
 on a wheelbarrow. They served to warm the policemen, 
 and the stem was offered to the cure, — who had never how- 
 ever blessed it ! What a piece of derision ! "* 
 
 However, there was one person in Chavignolles who did 
 not veer round with the prevailing wind : — 
 
 ' The schoolmaster did not conceal his way of thinking. 
 
 ' Bouvard and Pecuchet congratulated him on it one day when 
 they were passing his door. 
 
 ' The next day he called on them. At the end of the week 
 they returned his visit. 
 
 'The daylight was fading, the boys had just gone away, and 
 the schoolmaster in his shirt-sleeves swept the court. His 
 wife, with a muslin cap on, was suckling a child. A little girl 
 hid herself behind her petticoats ; a hideous brat was playing 
 on the ground at her feet ; the water from the washing which 
 she was doing in the kitchen flowed in front of the house. 
 
 ' '' You see," said the schoolmaster, " how the Government 
 treats us ! " and at once he began to inveigh against the influ-
 
 326 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ences of capital. It should be democratised ; matter should be 
 emancipated. 
 
 ' " I ask for nothing better ! " said Pecuchet. " At least they 
 ought to have recognised the right to assistance." 
 
 ' " Yet another right ! " said Bouvard. " Nonsense ! The pro- 
 visional government had been weak in not ordaining fraternity." 
 
 ' " Then try to establish it ! " 
 
 * As the daylight was gone. Petit roughly ordered his wife to 
 place a light in his study. 
 
 ' On the plaster walls tlie lithograph portraits of the orators 
 of the Left were fastened with pins, A small bookcase stood 
 over a deal writing-desk. For seats, one had a chair, a stool, 
 and an old soap-box ; he affected to laugh. But poverty 
 hollowed his cheeks, and his narrow temples indicated a ram- 
 like obstinacy, an unmanageable pride. He would never give 
 way. 
 
 ' " Besides, you may see what keeps me up ! " 
 
 ' It was a pile of newspapers on a shelf, and he set forth 
 in fevered words his articles of faith : disarmament of troops, 
 abolition of magistrates, equality of salaries, a mean level by 
 which one would obtain the golden age, under the form of the 
 Republic, Avith a dictator at its head, the right sort of fellow to 
 do the whole thing for you soundly ! 
 
 ' Then he reached down a bottle of liqueur and three glasses, 
 in order to propose a toast to the hero, the immortal victim, 
 Maximilian ! 
 
 ' On the threshold appeared the black cassock of the parson. 
 
 ' Having greeted the company cheerfully, he addressed the 
 schoolmaster, and said to him, almost in a whisper : 
 
 ' " How is our little matter of the Saint Joseph getting on ? " 
 
 ' "They have given nothing," replied the schoolmaster. 
 
 '"That is your fault!" 
 
 ' " I have done what I could ! " 
 
 '"Really?" 
 
 ' Bouvard and Pecuchet discreetly rose. Petit made them sit 
 down again, and addressing himself to the cure : — 
 
 '"Is that all .>" 
 
 ' The Abbe Jeufroy hesitated ; then with a smile, which soft- 
 ened his reprimand :
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 327 
 
 ' " It is thought that you neglect sacred history^ somewhat." 
 
 '" Oh ! sacred history ! " interrupted Bouvard. 
 
 ' " What fault have you to find with it^ sir ? " 
 
 ' " I — none. Only perhaps there are more useful things to be 
 learned than the story of Jonah and the Kings of Israel." 
 
 ' " You are at liberty to do as you please ! " replied the priest 
 drily. 
 
 'And without heeding the strangers, or perhaps because of 
 them, he went on : 
 
 ' " The catechism hour is too short ! " 
 
 ' Petit shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 ' " Pray attend ! You will lose your boarders ! " 
 
 ' The ten francs a month paid by these pupils was the better 
 part of his income. But the cassock exasperated him : 
 
 ' " So much the worse ; take your revenge ! " 
 
 '"A man of my character never takes vengeance," said the 
 priest without emotion. " Only I would remind you that the law 
 of the 15th of March assigns the superintendence of primary 
 instruction to us." 
 
 ' " Ah ! I know it only too well," cried the schoolmaster. " It 
 also appertains to colonels of police ! Why not to the local 
 policeman .'' — then the system would be complete ! " 
 
 ' And he sank down on the bench, biting his fingers, holding 
 his anger, choked by the sensation of his want of powei*. 
 
 ' The ecclesiastic touched him lightly on the shoulder. 
 
 ' " I did not wish to grieve you, friend ! Quiet yourself ! A 
 little reason ! 
 
 ' " Here is Easter close upon us ! I hope that you will set an 
 example by communicating with the rest ? " 
 
 ' "That is too much ! I — I submit to such absurdities .''" 
 
 ' In the presence of this blasphemy the cure turned pale. His 
 eyeballs gleamed. His jaw quivered : 
 
 ' " Hold your tongue, unhappy man, hold your tongue ! — and 
 his wife is the woman who takes charge of the church linen ! " 
 
 ' " Well — what ? What has she done ? " 
 
 ' " She never comes to mass ! Like you, for that matter." 
 
 ' " Well ! A schoolmaster is not cashiered for a thing like 
 that ! " 
 
 '"He can be dismissed."
 
 328 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' The priest said no more. He was at the end of the room, 
 in the shadow. Petit with his chin on his chest was thinking. 
 
 'They would arrive at the other end of France^ their last 
 penny swallowed by the journey, and they would again find over 
 there under diiferent names the same cure, the same superinten- 
 dent, the same prefect ; all of them up to the Minister were like 
 the rings of the same crushing chain ! He had already received 
 a warning, others would follow. Then ? and in a kind of hallu- 
 cination he saw himself walking on along a high-road, a bag on 
 his back, those whom he loved beside him, his hand stretched 
 out towards a post-chaise ! 
 
 ' At that moment liis wife was taken with a fit of coughing in 
 the kitchen, the last-born baby began to sci-eam, and the boy 
 was crying. 
 
 ' " Poor children ! " said the priest in a gentle voice. 
 
 * Then the father burst into sobs. 
 
 ' " Yes, yes ! anything that is wanted ! " 
 ' " I coimt upon it," said the Cure. 
 ' And having made the usual bow : — 
 ' " Gentlemen, I wish you a very good-evening." 
 ' The schoolmaster remained with his face in his hands. He 
 rejected Bouvard's advances. 
 
 ' " No ! leave me ! I would like to die ! I am a poor crea- 
 ture." 
 
 * The two friends returned to their house congratulating them- 
 selves upon their independence. The power of the Clergy terri- 
 fied them. 
 
 ' The reaction against the Republic continuing, " three million 
 electors found themselves excluded from universal suffrage. 
 The caution-money of newspapers was raised, censorship of the 
 press re-established. There was a feeling against the romances 
 in the daily papers. Classical philosophy was considered danger- 
 ous. The middle classes preached the dogma of material 
 interests, and the people seemed satisfied.' 
 
 At this juncture M. de Faverges thought it expedient to 
 give a political lunch, at which Bouvard was shocked by the 
 contrast between the magnificence of the apartments in 
 which they met and the meanness of the conversation.
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 329 
 
 Having overheard M. de Faverges remarking to the Abbe 
 Jeufroy, ' We must re-establish obedience. Authority dies, 
 if it is discussed ! The right divine, there is nothing but 
 that ! ' the friends began to study the works of pohtical 
 theorists, beginnnig with the Enghshmen Fihner and Hobbes, 
 and descending, through Rousseau, St. Simon, Fourier and 
 others, to Auguste Comte ; they found that all the social 
 reformers clamoured for a vigorous despotism interfering 
 with the most minute details of domestic life. All reduced 
 their own systems to an absurdity. 
 
 " These documents distressed Pecuchet. In the evening at 
 dinner he said : — 
 
 ' "■ That there are absurdities in the works of the Utopians I 
 admit ; none the less, they deserve our love. The hideousness 
 of the world distressed them, and they have all suffered in the 
 effort to make it more beautiful. Bethink yourself of Thomas 
 More decapitated, Campanilla put to the torture seven times, 
 Buonarotti with a chain round his neck, Saint-Simon perishing 
 in want, many others. They might have lived lives of tran- 
 quillity : but no ! they trod their path with their heads to 
 heaven like heroes.' 
 
 ' " Do you think that the world will be changed," replied 
 Bouvard, "thanks to the theories of some gentleman ?" 
 
 •^"What then !" said Pecuchet, "it is time to give up squat- 
 ting in egotism ! Let us look for the best system ! " 
 
 * " Then you count upon finding it ? " 
 '"Certainly !" 
 
 * " You } " 
 
 ' And in the fit of laughing which seized Bouvard his 
 shoulders and his stomach heaved together. Redder than the 
 jam on the table, his napkin under his arm, he kept repeating 
 . . . " ha ! ha ! ha ! " in an irritating manner. 
 
 ' Pecuchet went out of the room slamming the door behind 
 him. 
 
 ' The housekeeper called for him all over the house, — and at 
 last he was found in the depths of his own apartment, in an
 
 330 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 easy-chair without fire or candle, and his cap over his eyes. 
 He was not ill, but was giving himself up to his own reflections. 
 'Their quarrel over, they recognised that their studies 
 wanted a sound foundation, — political economy. So they in- 
 quired into supply and demand, capital and rent, imposts and 
 prohibition.' 
 
 The coup cVEtat shortly afterwards pleased everybody ; 
 even Petit rejoiced that Thiers and other deputies were in 
 prison. 
 
 'The butchery on the Boulevards won the approbation of 
 Chavignolles. No mercy for the conquered, no pity for the 
 victims ! As soon as one revolts one is a ci'iminal. 
 
 ' " Let us thank Providence ! " said the cure, " and after 
 Providence, Louis Bonaparte. He is surrounding himself with 
 the men of most distinction ! The Comte de Faverges will be 
 made a Senator ! " 
 
 ' The next day they had a visit from the chief of the police. 
 
 ' These gentlemen had talked a good deal. He pledged 
 them to hold their tongues. 
 
 ' " Would you like to know my opinion ? " said Pecuchet. 
 " Since the middle class are savage, the artisans jealous, the 
 priests servile, — and the people in the end puts up with all 
 tyrants, provided it is allowed to keep its muzzle in the feeding- 
 trough. Napoleon has done rightly ! Let him gag the rabble 
 and exterminate it ! That will never be more than it deserves 
 for its hatred of right, its cowardice, its ineptitude, its blind- 
 ness." 
 
 A still worse disappointment awaited the friends. They 
 began to grow tired of one another. 
 
 Bouvard beg-an to reflect that he might do worse than 
 marry again, and seriously paid his court to Madame Bordin. 
 A series of accidents inflamed Pecuchet with a violent passion 
 for Melie, the maid, who had been recommended by Gorju. 
 But it turned out that Madame Bordin cared nothing for 
 Bouvard, her affections being really fixed upon a particular
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 331 
 
 meadow in his farm, and when he refused her this on the 
 occasion of drawing up the marriage-settlement, she broke 
 out into insults, spoke contemptuously of his constitution, 
 his pot-belly ; while Pecuchet discovered too late that Melie 
 must have had other admirers than himself. 
 
 The disillusionment brought the friends together again ; 
 they repeated all the commonplaces that have ever been said 
 to the disadvantage of women ; and consoled themselves with 
 a course of hydropathy and gymnastics under the guidance 
 of the Manual of Amoros ; and with the results which usually 
 attend upon the athletics of the middle-aged. 
 
 At this period some spirit-rappers descended upon the 
 Chateau de Faverges, and from thence their practices spread 
 through the village ; and by a natural sequence directed the 
 attention of Pecuchet to animal magnetism ; he read the 
 Magnetiser's Chiide by Montacabere, and imparted his dis- 
 coveries to Bouvard. Its therapeutic powers particularly 
 interested them, and the successful results of an experiment 
 upon their housekeeper tempted them to a wider extension 
 of their skill ; the fame of Bouvard even spread to Falaise. 
 
 Soon their garden was crowded with patients ; a woman 
 with a tumour among them ; a pubhc demonstration was 
 given of the effect of a magnetised tree, but in spite of some 
 encouraging symptoms, ' Bouvard and Pecuchet had not on 
 the whole succeeded. Had that to do with the temperature, 
 or the smell of tobacco, or the Abbe Jeufroy's umbrella, 
 which was ornamented with copper, a metal unfavourable to 
 the emission of the fluid ? ' 
 
 Spiritualism succeeded magnetism, and Pecuchet foundered 
 his intellect in the endeavour to discover what there was 
 beautiful in the revelations of Swedenborg, which appeared 
 to Bouvard a fooFs dream ; but he was not proof against the 
 charms of magic, and employed the methods of one Dupotet
 
 332 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 to raise a spirit called Bechet with such effect that they 
 frightened their old housekeeper out of her wits. She left 
 them that evening for good. 
 
 For a time their extravagances became wilder each day ; 
 they took a divining-wand, sought for hidden treasure ; 
 mesmerised fowls ; Pecuchet invited a condition of ecstasy, 
 and found that it depended upon an external and material 
 circumstance, the bright under-surface of the peak of his 
 cap. This led them to study metaphysics, ethics, and at 
 last Bouvard did not even believe in matter. 
 
 'The certainty that nothing exists (deplorable though it be) 
 is none the less a certainty. Few persons are capable of having 
 it. This transcendental position inspired them with pride, and 
 they would have liked to make a display. An opportunity 
 offered. 
 
 ' One morning on their way to buy tobacco they saw a crowd 
 in front of Langlois' door. They were surrounding the Falaise 
 omnibuSj and there was a great talk of one Touache, a galley- 
 slave, who roamed about the country. The conductor had met 
 him at Croix- Verte, between two policemen, and the good folk 
 of Chavignolles breathed a sigh of deliverance. 
 
 ' Girbal and the Captain remained on the green, then the 
 justice of the peace arrived, anxious to have information, and 
 M. Marescot, the notary, in a velvet cap and list slippers. 
 
 ' Langlois invited them to honour his shop with their 
 presence. They would be more at their ease, and in spite of 
 the customers and the noise of the bell these gentlemen con- 
 tinued to discuss the delinquencies of Touache. 
 
 ' " My goodness ! " said Bouvard, " he had bad instincts, there 
 you are ! " 
 
 '"They are conquered by virtue," replied the notary. 
 
 ' " But if one has no virtue ? ' 
 
 'And Bouvard absolutely denied free-will. 
 
 '" Yet," said the Captain, " I can do what I like ! I am free, 
 for instance, to move my leg ! " 
 
 ' " No, sir, for you have a motive for moving it ! "
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 333 
 
 The Captain sought an answei% failed to find one. But 
 Girbal let off this missile : — 
 
 ' " A Republican speaking against liberty ! that is funny." 
 
 ' " A real joke ! " said Langlois. 
 
 ' Bouvard interrupted him : 
 
 * " Whence comes it that you do not give your fortune to the 
 poor ? " 
 
 ' The grocer cast his eyes round his shop with an anxious air. 
 
 ' " Eh, why ? I am not such a fool ! I keep it for myself! " 
 
 ' " If you were St. Vincent de Paul you would act differently, 
 because you would have his character. You obey your own. 
 Therefore you are not free." 
 
 '"It is a quibble," replied the company in chorus. 
 
 Bouvard did not budge from his position, and pointing to the 
 scales upon the counter : — 
 
 ' " They will remain motionless, so long as one of the pans is 
 empty. It is the same with the will ; and the oscillation of 
 the balance between two weights, which seem equal, represents 
 the work of our mind, when it deliberates upon motives, till the 
 moment, when the stronger has its way, determines. 
 
 "'All that," said Girbal, "does nothing for Touache, and 
 does not prevent hira from being a thoroughly vicious rascal." 
 
 ' Pecuchet took up the word : — 
 
 ' " Vices are natural properties, like inundations, storms." 
 
 ' The notary stopped him, and raising himself on tip-toe at 
 every word, said : — 
 
 ' " I think your system complete in its immorality. It gives 
 an opening to all excesses, excuses crimes, makes the guilty 
 innocent." 
 
 '"Certainly,' said Bouvard. "The unfortunate being who 
 follows his appetites is as much in his rights as the honest man 
 who listens to reason." 
 
 '"Do not defend monsters." 
 
 '"Why monsters.^ When a man is born blind, an idiot, a 
 homicide, it seems to us contrary to ordei-, as if order were 
 known to us, as if nature worked to an end ! " 
 
 ' Then you dispute Providence ? " 
 
 ' " Yes, I dispute it ! " 
 
 '"Consider history rather," cried Pecuchet. "Recall the
 
 334 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 assassinations of kings, the massacre of peoples, the dissensions 
 in families, the sorrows of individuals." 
 
 '^' And at the same time," added Bouvard, for they mutually 
 heated one another, " this Providence of yours cares for the 
 little birds, and makes the claws of crayfish grow again. Ah, — 
 if you understand by Providence a law which rules everything, 
 I am with you, and then ! " 
 
 ' " Yet, sir," said the notary, " there are principles ! " 
 
 '"What is your song now .-^ A science, according to Con- 
 dillac, is so much the better, as it has no need of them ! They 
 only epitomise acquired knowledge, and refer us precisely to 
 those notions which are open to question." 
 
 ' " Have you, like us," went on Pecuchet, " searched, explored 
 the secrets of metaphysics ? " 
 
 ' " That is true, gentlemen, that is true." 
 
 ' And the company broke up. 
 
 ' But Coulon, drawing them aside, told them in a fatherly 
 tone that he was not strict, certainly, he even detested the 
 Jesuits. However, he did not go so far as they did ! Oh no, — 
 certainly not ; — and at the corner of the green they passed in 
 front of the Captain, who was lighting his pipe, grumbling : — 
 
 ' " Still I do what I like, damn it all ! " 
 
 ' Bouvard and Pecuchet produced their abominable paradoxes 
 on other occasions. They cast a doubt upon the honesty of 
 men, the chastity of women, the intelligence of government, 
 the good sense of the people, — in a word, undermined the 
 foundations. 
 
 ' Foureau lost his temper over it, and threatened them with 
 prison if they went on with such discourse. 
 
 ' The evidence of their superiority was galling. As they sup- 
 ported immoral propositions they must be immoral, calumnies 
 were invented. 
 
 ' Then an unfortunate faculty was developed in their minds ; 
 that of seeing inanity and being unable to tolerate it any longer. 
 
 ' Insignificant things saddened them ; the advertisements in 
 the papers, the profile of a middle-class person, a stupid remai'k 
 heard by chance. 
 
 'Thinking over what was said in their own village, and that 
 there were from them to the Antipodes other Coulons, other
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 335 
 
 Marescots, other Foureaus^ they felt as it were the heaviness of 
 the whole earth weighing them down. 
 
 ' They ceased to go out, to receive anybody.' 
 
 Death itself ceased to be a reality to tiiem, and their 
 existence became so insupportable that Pecuchet took two 
 ropes from the gymnastic apparatus, made a slip-knot at the 
 end of each, and slung them over the cross-beam of the attic 
 roof with two chairs, one under each. 
 
 On the 24th of December, just before midnight, a quarrel 
 broke out ; Pecuchet rushed out to the barn, followed by 
 Bouvard ; they each jumped on to one of the chairs, and 
 prepared to adjust the fatal noose, when Pecuchet remem- 
 bered that their wills were not yet made. Looking through 
 the window they saw lights in the churchyard : it w^as the 
 midnight mass of Christmas Eve. 
 
 Curiosity drove them to join the service ; at the end of it 
 the Host was elevated by the priest as high as possible. 
 ' Then there burst out a song of gladness, inviting all the 
 world to the feet of the King of Angels. Bouvard and 
 Pecuchet involuntarily joined in, and felt, as it were, a new 
 dawn rising in their souls.' 
 
 The next day it seemed to them that the execution of 
 their rash purpose had been suspended by a miraculous 
 intervention, and they resolved to betake themselves to 
 pious reading. 
 
 Part IIL 
 
 ' One day they went to mass, then returned. It was a dis- 
 traction at the end of the week. The Count and Countess de 
 Faverges bowed to them in the distance ; the thing was 
 remarked. The justice of the peace said to them, closing his 
 eyelids, " Perfect, I commend you ! " All the ladies of the 
 place now began to send them holy bread.
 
 336 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' Abbe Jeufroy paid them a visit ; they returned it ; an 
 intimacy grew up ; and the priest never talked of religion. 
 
 ' They were astonished at this reserve ; so much so that 
 Pecuchet asked him casually how a man should set about 
 getting faith. 
 
 ' " First observe the duties of religion." 
 
 ' They did so ; the one with hope, the other with mistrust, 
 Bouvard being convinced that he would never be pious. For 
 a month he followed all the services regularly, but, unlike 
 Pecuchet, did not wish to condemn himself to fasting.' 
 
 None the less, when he impiously ordered a beef-steak on 
 Good Friday, he found himself unable to eat it ; the habits 
 learned in childhood were too strong for him. 
 
 Pecuchet, as might have been anticipated, took his devo- 
 tion very seriously ; he tried to overcome his passionate 
 temper, to cultivate humility, became so chaste that he 
 averted his gaze from his own limbs when he was undressed, 
 and wore bathing-drawers when he went to bed. One day 
 Bouvard surprised him half-stripped, in the act of scourging 
 himself. 
 
 The friends passed under the special protection of Made- 
 moiselle Reine, the cure's housekeeper ; she introduced them 
 to one Gouttman, a purveyor of pious articles ; and they 
 were not long in bartering the contents of their museum for 
 candelabra, portable altars, pictures of saints, a cradleful of 
 hay, and a cork cathedral. 
 
 ' Pecuchet adopted the ecclesiastical style, doubtless owing 
 to his intimacy with the cure. He had his smile, his voice, 
 and a chilly way of slipping his hands up to the wrists into 
 his sleeves.' He groaned over his meals, having read in a 
 manual of devotion that it was becoming to do so ; and 
 finally, in order to acquire the gift of perseverance, made a 
 })ilgrimage, in company with Bouvard, to the shrine of Notre 
 Dame de la Delivrande, where there was a miraculous statue,
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 337 
 
 ' discovered about 1112 by a sheep, which indicated the 
 place where it was by tapping on the grass with its foot, and 
 on that spot Count Baldwin erected a sanctuary/ 
 
 In spite of the miraculous powers of Notre Dame de la 
 Delivrande, Bouvard gained little from the expedition, 
 which, however, brought him into contact once more with 
 his old friend Barberou, who appeared at an inn at which 
 the friends stayed, in the capacity of wine - merchant's 
 traveller. 
 
 On their return they were invited to the annual dinner 
 which Abbe Jeufroy was in the habit of giving to his col- 
 leagues ; it began at two o'clock in the afternoon, and ended 
 at eleven o'clock at night. 
 
 ' They drank perry, produced puns. Abbe Pruneau impro- 
 vised an acrostic. M. Rougon showed some card-tricks, and a 
 young curate, Cerpet, sang a little romance which touched the 
 borders of gallantry. 
 
 Before long the friends decided to take the Holy Com- 
 munion, which they did on the Sunday after the annual 
 confirmation. They were rewarded by an invitation to the 
 house of the Comte de Faverges. 
 
 On their return from church they found a book awaiting 
 them ; it was the Examen du Christianisme by Louis Hervieu. 
 Barberou had sent it. Pecuchet putitout of sight. Bouvard 
 had no wish to make its acquaintance. 
 
 ' He had been told that the Sacrament would change him ; 
 for several days he was on the look-out for signs of budding in 
 his conscience. But he continued the same, and a painful 
 amazement took possession of him. M. Jeufroy, while com- 
 forting him, recommended the Catechism of Abbe Gaume.' 
 
 Pecuchet, on the other hand, became highly devout, sang 
 psalms as he walked up and down the passage ; stopped the 
 
 Y
 
 338 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 natives of Chavignolles, argued with them, endeavoured to 
 convert them. They laughed in his face and called him a 
 hypocrite. ' It was now thought that the friends were going 
 too far.' 
 
 ' Pecuchet took refuge with the mystic authors. Saint Theresa, 
 Jean de la Croix, Louis de Grenade, Simpoli, and of the more 
 modern, Monseigneur Chaillot. Instead of the sublimities, 
 which he expected, he only encountered platitudes, a very slack 
 style, chilly images, and plenty of comparisons taken from the 
 lapidaiy's shop. 
 
 ' He learned, however, that there is an active purgation and 
 a passive purgation, an internal vision and an external vision, 
 four kinds of prayers, nine excellencies in love, six degrees in 
 humility, and that the wound of the soul is not very different 
 from a spiritual robbery. 
 
 ' Some points embarrassed him. 
 
 ' " Since the flesh is cursed, how is it that one is bound to 
 thank God for the benefit of existence ? What mean is to be 
 kept between the fear indispensable to salvation, and hope, 
 which is no less so .'' Where is the sign of grace ?" etc. 
 
 ' The answers of M, Jeufroy were simple : 
 
 ' " Do not worry yourself. In wishing to get to the bottom 
 of everything one runs on a dangerous slope." 
 
 ' The Catechism of Perseverance by Gaume had disgusted 
 Bouvard to such a degree that he took up Louis Hervieu's 
 volume. It was a summary of modern exegesis forbidden by 
 the Government. Barberou had bought it as a Republican. 
 
 ' It awoke doubts in Bouvard's mind, and, to begin with, on 
 original sin. " If God created man peccable. He ought not to 
 punish him ; and evil is anterior to the fall, because there were 
 already volcanoes, savage animals. In a word, this dogma 
 upsets my notions of justice ! " 
 
 ' " What would you have .'' " said the cure, " it is one of those 
 truths about which every one is agreed, without being able to 
 supply proofs ; and we ourselves visit the crimes of their fathers 
 upon the children. Thus morality and law justify this ordinance 
 of Providence, which is found in nature." 
 
 ' Bouvard shook his head. He also doubted hell.
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 339 
 
 ' " For every punishment should look to the improvement of 
 the guilty one, which is impossible with an eternal penalty ; 
 and how many are suffering it ! Just think, all the ancients, the 
 Jews, Mussulmans, idolaters, heretics, and children dead unbap- 
 tized, those children created by God, and with what object ! 
 To punish them for a sin which they have not committed ! " 
 
 ' " Such is the opinion of St. Augustine," added the cure, 
 "and St. Fulgentius includes even the foetus in damnation. 
 The Church, it is true, has come to no decision on this point. 
 One remark, however : it is not God but the sinner who con- 
 demns himself, and the offence being infinite, since God is 
 infinite the punishment should be infinite. Is that all, sir .'' " 
 
 ' "Explain me the Trinity," said Bouvard. 
 
 ' " With pleasure. Let us take a comparison : the three sides 
 of a triangle, or rather our own soul, which contains being, 
 knowing, and willing ; what one calls a faculty in man is a 
 person in God. There is your mystery." 
 
 * " Yes, but the three sides of a triangle are not each one 
 of them the triangle : these three faculties of the soul do not 
 form three souls, and your persons of the Trinity are three 
 Gods." 
 
 ' " Blasphemy ! " 
 
 '"Then there is only one person, one God, one substance 
 affected in three manners ! " 
 
 ' " Let us adore without understanding," said the cure. 
 
 ' " Good," said Bouvard. 
 
 ' He was afraid of being taken for an atheist, of falling into 
 disfavour at the big house. 
 
 * They used to go there now three times a week about five 
 o'clock in the winter, and the cup of tea warmed them. The 
 Count recalled the style of the ancient court by his manners ; 
 the Countess, placid and stout, showed on all points great dis- 
 cernment ; and their daughter. Mademoiselle Yolande, was the 
 type of the young person, the angel of the " Keepsake"; and 
 Madame de Noares, their companion, was like Pecuchet, having 
 his pointed nose.' 
 
 She had converted Gorju, and secured the Count's pro- 
 tection for two vagabond children that she had picked up.
 
 340 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 Their father was the convict Touache, a fact which she 
 concealed. 
 
 ' When M. Jeufroy used to go to the chateau the two brats 
 were sent for ; he used to question them, then gave a lecture^ 
 into which he used to put some elevation on account of the 
 audience. 
 
 ' Once when he had discoursed on the Patriarchs, Bouvard, 
 on the way home along with him and Pecuchetj abused them 
 violently. 
 
 ' " Jacob is distinguished by his rascalities, David by his 
 mui'ders, Solomon by his debaucheries." 
 
 ' The Abbe replied to him that one must look further than 
 that. The saci'ifice of Abraham is the type of the Passion ; 
 Jacob another type of the Messiah, like Joseph, like the brazen 
 serpent, like Moses. 
 
 ' " Do you believe," said Bouvard, " that he composed the 
 Pentateuch ? " 
 
 '"Yes, without doubt." 
 
 ' " Yet his death is recorded in it ; the same remark applies 
 to Joshua ; and as for the Judges, the author infoi'ms us that at 
 the period whose history he is writing Israel had not as yet 
 kings. The work then was written under the kings. The 
 prophets also amaze me." 
 
 ' " Now he is going to deny the prophets." 
 
 ' " Not at all ! But their heated imagination saw Jehovah 
 under different forms, that of a fire, of a bush, of an old man, of 
 a dove ; and they were not certain of revelation since they are 
 always asking for a sign." 
 
 * " Ah, and you have foimd these fine things .'' " 
 
 ' " In Spinoza." 
 
 ' At this word the cure jumped. 
 
 ' " Have you read him } " 
 
 ' " Heaven forbid ! And yet, sir, science . . ." 
 
 ' "Sir, one is not scientific if one is not a Christian," 
 
 'The subject of science inspired him with sarcasms: — "Will 
 it make a single blade of corn grow, your science .'' What do we 
 know > '' said he. 
 
 ' But he did know that the world was created for us ; he knew
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 341 
 
 that archangels are above angels ; he knew that the human 
 body will rise again^ such as it was at thirty years of age. 
 
 ' His sacerdotal confidence maddened Bouvard, who, mis- 
 trusting Louis Hervieu, wrote to Varlot ; and Pecuchet, better 
 informed, asked M. Jeufroy for explanations of the Holy 
 Scriptures. 
 
 ' The six days of Genesis mean six great epochs. The theft 
 of the precious jewels taken by the Jews from the Egyptians 
 must be taken to signify intellectual riches, — the arts, whose 
 secrets they had stolen. Isaiah did not completely disrobe him- 
 self, nudus in Latin meaning only to the hips ; thus Virgil 
 advises us to strip to plough, and that writer would never have 
 given a precept contrary to decency ! Ezekiel devouring a 
 book has nothing extraordinary in it ; do not we talk of devour- 
 ing a pamphlet, a paper ? 
 
 "But if we see .metaphors everywhere, what will become of 
 the facts .''" The Abbe none the less asserted that they were real. 
 
 ' This manner of understanding them appeared to Pecuchet 
 disloyal. He pushed his researches further, and brought a note 
 on the contradictions in the Bible. " Where," he asked, " was 
 the inspiration ? " 
 
 '"The greater the reason for admitting it," replied M. 
 Jeufroy, smiling. " Impostors require consistency, honest writers 
 do not trouble about it. In difficulty let us have recourse to 
 the Church ! She is infallible always." 
 
 ' " Whence comes her infallibility ? " 
 
 ' " The Councils of Bale and of Constance attribute it to the 
 Councils. But the Councils are often at variance — for example, 
 the one which passed a verdict for Athanasius and for Arius ; 
 those of Florence and the Lateran attribute it to the Pope. 
 But Adrian vi. declares that the Pope can make a mistake 
 like any other man." 
 
 '"Quibbles ! All that has nothing to do with the perman- 
 ence of dogma." 
 
 '"Louis Hervieu's work points out its variations. Baptism 
 formerly was reserved for adults, extreme unction was not a 
 sacrament till the ninth century, the real presence was decreed 
 in the eighth, purgatory recognised in the fifteenth, the im- 
 maculate conception is an affair of yesterday."
 
 34^ LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' M. Jeufroy secretly consulted his friend Pruneau, who 
 sought for proofs for him in the authors. A war of erudition 
 ensued; and, stimulated by his self-esteem, Pecuchet became 
 transcendently mythological. 
 
 ' He compared the Virgin to Isis, the Eucharist to the homa of 
 the Persians,Bacchusto Moses, Noah's Ark to the ship of Xithurus ; 
 — these resemblances proved for him the identity of religions. 
 
 ' But there cannot be several religions since there is only one 
 God, — and when he was at the end of his arguments the man 
 of the cassock used to cry, " It is a mystery ! " 
 
 ' What does that word mean ? Deficiency of knowledge ; 
 very good. But if it indicates a thing, the mere statement of 
 which involves a contradiction, it is a folly ; and Pecuchet would 
 not leave M. Jeufroy. He surprised him in his garden, awaited 
 him at the confessional, hurried him into the sacristy.' 
 
 The priest used to devise plans of escape, but he was not 
 always successful ; and one day Pecuchet succeeded in inter- 
 cepting him on the high-road, and entangling him in a long 
 discussion on the subject of persecutions and martyrdoms ; a 
 very heavy shower of rain came on ; they had only one 
 umbrella between them, and there they stood belly to belly 
 under its protection, shaken by the violence alike of the 
 storm and their altercation. In the end Pecuchet claimed 
 the title of martyr for the Protestants killed in Ireland and 
 Belgium by the Catholics, but he was met by the statement 
 that there are no martyrs outside the Church. 
 
 * " One word : if the value of a martyrdom depends upon 
 the doctrine, how could it serve to demonstrate the value of 
 the doctrine .'' " 
 
 'They parted at the priest's house, who could only say: "I 
 am sorry for you ; in real truth, I am sorry for you ! " ' 
 
 Meanwhile the visits to the chateau were continued, and 
 Madame de Noares interested herself in the conversion of 
 Pecuchet ; she secretly sewed a medal of St. Joseph into the 
 lining of his cap, that saint being particularly favourable to 
 conversions.
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 343 
 
 ' Her time was spent in writing letters, in visiting the poor, 
 in dissolving irregular cohabitations, in distributing photographs 
 of the Sacred Heart. A gentleman was to send her some 
 " martyr paste," a mixture of paschal wax and the human dust 
 taken from the catacombs, and which is used in plasters or 
 pilules in desperate cases. She promised some of it to 
 Pecuchet. 
 
 ' He seemed shocked at such materialism. 
 
 ' In the evening a footman from the chateau brought him a 
 bundle of little books, relating pious speeches of the great 
 Napoleon, smart remarks made by clergymen in public-houses, 
 horrible deaths that had happened to atheists. Madame de 
 Noares knew all that by heart, and a quantity of miracles as well. 
 
 'She related stupid ones, aimless miracles, as if God had 
 worked them to mystify the world. Her own grandmother 
 had shut up some dried plums in a cupboard covered with a 
 cloth, and when the cupboard was opened a year later, thirteen 
 of them were seen on the cloth, forming a cross. 
 
 ' " Explain me that I " 
 
 ' This was her phrase after her stories, which she maintained 
 with the obstinacy of a pack-ass ; for the rest a good-natured 
 woman and of a playful humour. 
 
 ' Once, however, she '- forgot herself." 
 
 ' Bouvard was protesting against the miracle of Pezilla : a jam- 
 pot in which consecrated wafers had been hidden during the 
 Revolution gilded itself. 
 
 ' " Perhaps there was a little yellow colour at the bottom 
 coming from damp ! " 
 
 ' "■ No, certainly not ! I tell you again, no ! The gilding 
 was caused by the contact with the Eucharist." 
 
 ' And she gave the attestations of Bishops in proof. " It is, 
 they say, like a buckler, a — a palladium over the diocese of 
 Perpignan. Ask M. Jeufroy ! " 
 
 ' Bouvard could not stand it any longer, and having looked 
 up his Louis Hervieu, took Pecuchet with him. 
 
 ' The ecclesiastic was finishing dinner. Reine offered chairs, 
 and on a sign she went and fetched two liqueur-glasses, which 
 she filled with Rosolio. 
 
 * After this Bouvard revealed what brought him. 
 
 ' The Abbe did not reply frankly.
 
 344 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' " Everything is possible with God, and miracles are a proof 
 of religion." 
 
 ' " There are, however, laws." 
 
 ' " That is neither here nor there. He disturbs them to in- 
 struct, correct." 
 
 ' " How do you know if He disturbs them ? " continued 
 Bouvard. " So long as nature follows her routine one does not 
 think of her, but in an extraordinary phenomenon we see the 
 hand of God." 
 
 ' " It may be there," said the ecclesiastic ; " and when an 
 event is proved by the evidence of witnesses .'' " 
 
 ' " The witnesses spoil the whole thing, for there are false 
 miracles." 
 
 'The priest turned red. 
 
 ' " Doubtless, sometimes." 
 
 ' " How are we to distinguish them from the true ones .'' And 
 if the true ones given in proof themselves need proof, why per- 
 form them .'' " 
 
 ' Reine intervened, and preaching like her master, said that 
 we must obey. 
 
 ' " Life is a passage, but death is etei'nal." 
 
 ' " In short," added Bouvard, rolling the Rosolio in his mouth, 
 " the miracles of other days are no better demonstrated than 
 those of to-day ; analogous reasonings defend those of the 
 Christians and of the Pagans." 
 
 'The cure threw the fork on the table. 
 
 ' " Those were false, yet again ! no miracles outside the 
 Church ! " 
 
 ' " Stop," said Pecuchet, " the same argument as for the 
 martyrs : the doctrine is supported by the facts, and the facts by 
 the doctrine." 
 
 ' M. Jeufroy after drinking a glass of water resumed : " Even 
 while you deny them, you believe in them. The world that 
 twelve fishermen converted — there — that seems to me a fine 
 miracle ! " 
 
 ' " Not at all." 
 
 ' Pecuchet accounted for it in quite another manner. 
 
 ' " Monotheism comes from the Hebrews, the Trinity from 
 India, the Word is in Plato, the Virgin-mother in Asia."
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 345 
 
 ' Never mind ! M. Jeufroy clung to the supernatural, would 
 not allow that Christianity could have humanly the smallest 
 reason for its existence, although he saw anticipations or 
 deformations of it in all nations. The impious raillery of the 
 eighteenth century he could have put up with ; but modern 
 criticism with its politeness exasperated him. 
 
 ' " I prefer the atheist who blasphemes to the sceptic who 
 cavils." 
 
 ' Then he looked at them with an air of bravado as if to dis- 
 miss them. 
 
 ' Pecuchet went away in low spirits. He had hoped for the 
 reconciliation of faith and reason.' 
 
 In spite of his wavering devotion, Pecuchet still continued 
 to visit the Faverges family, and was treated to edifying 
 remarks on things in general by the Count, whose favourite 
 phrase was, ' It ought not to be allowed.** 
 
 ' Social economy, fine arts, literature, history, scientific doc- 
 trines, he decided on all in his quality as Christian, and head of 
 a family ; and might God be pleased to grant, that in this re- 
 spect the government might show the same severity as he dis- 
 played in his family ! Power alone is the judge of the dangers 
 of science ; spread too widely, it inspires the people with deadly 
 ambitions. It was more happy, was this poor people, when the 
 nobility and the bishops tempered the absolutism of the King. 
 Now the manufacturers work it to their advantage. It is on the 
 point of falling into slavery.' 
 
 There visited at the chateau in these days one M. Mahurot, 
 the prospective son-in-law of the Count ; one day on arriv- 
 ing Bouvard and Pe'cuchet found the mayor waiting for M. 
 Jeufroy to fix the date of the marriage, which was to take 
 place at the mayor's office before the ceremony at the church, 
 in order to show contempt for the civil marriage. 
 
 Foureau tried to defend it. The Count and Hurel attacked 
 it. What was a municipal function in comparison with a 
 priesthood ? and the baron would not have believed himself
 
 346 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 married if the ceremony had only taken place in the presence 
 of a three-coloured scarf. 
 
 ' " Bravo," said M. Jeufroy, coming in ; " marriage being estab- 
 lished by Jesus." 
 
 ' Pecuchet stopped him : " In which Gospel ? In the Aposto- 
 lic times they thought so meanly of it that Tertullian compares 
 it to adultery." 
 
 ' " Oh — pray." 
 
 ' " Certainly ! and it is not a sacrament ! A sacrament de- 
 mands a sign. Show me the sign in marriage ! " 
 
 ' In vain did the cure reply that it was an image of the alli- 
 ance of God with the Church. "You do not understand even 
 Christianity ! and law." 
 
 ' " Law preserves its stamp/' said M. de Faverges ; " without 
 it, law would authorise polygamy ! " 
 
 ' A voice replied : " Where would the harm of that be .'' " 
 
 ' It was Bouvard, half hidden by a curtain. 
 
 ' " One may have several wives, like the patriarchs, the Mor- 
 mons, the Mussulmans, and none the less be an honest man ! " 
 
 ' " Never ! " cried the priest ; " honesty consists in rendering 
 that which is due. We owe homage to God. Now, he who is 
 not a Christian is not honest." 
 
 ' " As honest as others," said Bouvard. 
 
 ' The Count thinking that he saw in this retort an attack on 
 religion, exalted it. Religion had freed the slaves. 
 
 ' Bouvard cited quotations proving the contrary. 
 
 ' " Saint Paul recommended them to obey their masters, like 
 Jesus. Saint Ambrose calls slaveiy a gift of God." 
 
 ' " Leviticus, Exodus, and the Councils sanctioned it. Bossuet 
 classes it among the rights of nations — and Monseigneur Bouvier 
 approves of it." 
 
 * The Count objected that Christianity, none the less, had 
 developed civilisation. 
 
 ' " And idleness, in making a virtue of poverty ! " 
 
 ' "Yet, six- — the morality of the Gospels." 
 
 ' " Well, well, not so moral after all ! The labourers of the 
 last hour are paid as much as those of the first. To him who 
 hath is given, and from him who hath not is taken away. As
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 347 
 
 for the precept about receiving blows without returning them, 
 and letting one's self be robbed, it encourages the bully, the 
 coward, and the rascal." 
 
 ' The scandal redoubled when Pecuchet had declared that he 
 liked Buddhism as well. 
 
 'The priest burst into a laugh. " Buddhism." 
 
 ' Madame de Noares raised her arms : " Buddhism ! " 
 
 ' *' What . . . Buddhism ! " repeated the Count. 
 
 '"Do you know it?" said Pecuchet to M. Jeufroy, who was 
 in a fury. 
 
 ' '' Well — learn it : better than Christianity, and before 
 Christianity it recognised the nothingness of earthly things. Its 
 practice is austere, its faithful servants more numerous than all 
 the Christians, and as for incarnation, Vishnu has not had one, 
 but nine ! So judge." 
 
 ' " Traveller's lies," said Madame de Noares. 
 
 ' " Backed up by the freemasons,'' added the cure. 
 
 ' And all speaking at once : " Come now — Come — Go on ! 
 Very fine ! — I think that absurd — Impossible — " Insomuch that 
 Pecuchet lost his temper, and declared he would turn Buddhist. 
 
 ' " You are insulting Christian ladies ! " said the baron. 
 Madame de Noares sank into an arm-chair. The Countess and 
 Yolande held their peace. The Count rolled his eyes. Hurel 
 was waiting for orders. The Abbe read his breviary to control 
 himself.' 
 
 Shortly after this scene the friends withdrew along with 
 Foureau, the mayor still smarting imder the insult offered 
 to civil marriage. 
 
 The children of Touache, having proved intractable, had 
 been handed over to him to be placed in a reformatory. 
 The friends begged to be appointed guardians to these 
 children ; to educate them would be a new interest in life ; 
 visions of affectionate young creatures growing into grace 
 under their care made Bouvard and Pecuchet look forward 
 sentimentally to the future. 
 
 Foureau, to spite the Faverges family, promised to send 
 the children.
 
 348 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' On returning home they found Marcel (their man-servant) at 
 the foot of the staircase -.under the Madonna, on his knees, praying 
 with fei-vour. His head thrown back, his eyes half-closed, his 
 hare-lip parted, he had the appearance of a Fakir in ecstasy. 
 
 ' " What a brute beast ! " said Bouvard. 
 
 ' " Why ? He perhaps is witnessing things which you would 
 envy him, if you could see them. Are there not two totally 
 distinct worlds ? The subject of a method of reasoning has less 
 value than the manner of reasoning. What does the belief 
 matter .'' The important thing is to believe.'' 
 
 ' Such were the objections of Pecuchet to the remark of 
 Bouvard.' 
 
 Victor and Vietorine duly arrived ; as also did several 
 books on education, from which Bouvard and Pecuchet 
 learned that one must banish every metaphysical idea and 
 follow the natural development according to the experi- 
 mental method. 
 
 Bouvard, as might have been expected, took charge of the 
 girl, Pecuchet of the boy. 
 
 Reading and writing proved to be things that are not 
 learned as a matter of course; the children yawned, were 
 irritable, fell asleep. ' Perhaps they were ill ? Too severe 
 a tension injures the youthful brain.' 
 
 As soon as the children felt at home they made havoc of 
 the garden. It was necessary to provide them with amuse- 
 ments. Rousseau recommends that the tutor should teach 
 the child to make its own toys ; but neither Bouvard nor 
 Pecuchet had the skill necessary to construct the simplest 
 plaything. Fenelon recommends from time to time ' an 
 innocent conversation."* They could not by any possibility 
 invent a single one. 
 
 By playing on the greediness of the boy and the vanity of 
 the girl they succeeded in inducing them to read and write. 
 But what next ?
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 349 
 
 ' Before proceeding to instruct a child one should know its 
 aptitudes. They can be guessed by means of phrenology. 
 They immersed themselves in it; then wished to verify its 
 assertions upon their own persons. Bouvard had the bump of 
 benevolence to show — imagination, veneration, and amorous 
 energy, commonly called erotism. On the temples of Pecuchet 
 were found philosophy and enthusiasm, joined with a tendency 
 to dissimulation. Such actually were their characters. What 
 surprised them more was to recognise in the one as in the other 
 the inclination to friendship; and charmed at the discovery 
 they embraced one another affectionately.' 
 
 In order to gain experience they took to examining the 
 heads of the country-folk on market days ; and scandalised 
 the cure by holding their sessions in the porch of the church. 
 ' Phrenology, according to M. Jeufroy, denied divine omni- 
 potence, and it is indecent to practise it under the shadow 
 of the holy place, in the very face of the altar.'' He drove 
 them away, and they established themselves at the barber"'s, 
 where they encountered Vaucorbeil, the doctor. He poured 
 contempt on their new science, which was not supported by 
 anatomy ; and yet in his presence they made a correct state- 
 ment of the characters of three separate individuals. The 
 doctor went out, and slammed the door behind him. 
 
 A subsequent examination of the heads of the two children 
 afflicted them ; but — 
 
 ' One should understand the exact meaning of words ; what 
 is called combativeness implies a contempt for death. If it 
 causes homicide, it can also produce heroic rescues. Acquisi- 
 tiveness includes both the skill of the pickpocket and the 
 ardour of the merchant. Irreverence runs parallel with the 
 spirit of criticism, craft with circumspection. An instinct is 
 always divided into two parts, a bad one and a good one. The 
 first can be destroyed by cultivating the second, and in this way 
 an audacious child, far from being a bandit, will become a 
 general. The coward will have only prudence, the avaricious 
 man economy, the prodigal generosity.
 
 350 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' A magnificent dream took possession of them ; if they 
 succeeded with the education of their pupils they would found 
 later on an establishment whose aim would be to correct the 
 intelligence, chasten the character, ennoble the heart. They 
 already talked of subscriptions and the buildings.' 
 
 The policeman asked them to try the head of his son. 
 The results of the examination were mortifying, and Placque- 
 vent comforted himself by remarking that for all that, the 
 boy would do what his father pleased. This led to a con- 
 versation on parental rights and filial duties. 
 
 ' According to Bouvard and Pecuchet children owed nothing 
 to the authors of their being ; their parents, on the other hand, 
 owe them food, education, advice, everything. 
 
 'The good folk protested against this immoral doctrine. 
 Placquevent was outraged by it, as though by an insult.' 
 
 Soon afterwards they found Placquevent cruelly cuffing 
 his son's head ; they reproved him ; he replied that he had a 
 right to do what he pleased with his own. 
 
 Determined to show an example to other people they set 
 about the instruction of the two children with redoubled 
 activity. Pecuchet demonstrated the meaning of geographi- 
 cal terms with a watering-pot and some sand ; but Victor 
 could not remember what he was told. Then Pecuchet tried 
 astronomy ; he put an arm-chair in the middle of the room, 
 and began to waltz around it : ' Imagine that this arm-chair 
 is the sun, and that I am the earth ; this is the way it 
 moves." Victor looked at him full of consternation. Then 
 he took an orange, pushed a stick through it to represent 
 the poles, then surrounded it with a charcoal line to mark 
 the equator. After this he moved the orange round a candle, 
 making him observe that all parts of the surface were not 
 illuminated simultaneously, which produces the difference 
 of climates; and for that of the seasons he sloped the
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 351 
 
 orange, for the earth does not stand straight, which is the 
 cause of the equinoxes and the solstice. 
 
 Victor had not understood in the least. ' He believed the 
 earth twirls on a long rod, and that the equator is a ring 
 enclosing its circumference. "* 
 
 Failing with geography, Pecuchet went on to history, but 
 Victor could never learn the names and dates of the kings of 
 France; and his tutor came to the conclusion that history 
 can only be learned by reading a great deal. 
 
 Drawing would obviously be a useful accomplishment, and 
 Pecuchet boldly set to work to qualify himself to be drawing- 
 master , but without success ; he never knew when to apply 
 the ' master stroke.'' 
 
 ' The sciences can be taught in connection with the commonest 
 objects; say, for example, what wine is made of; and the ex- 
 planation being given, Victor and Victorine had to repeat it. 
 It was the same with groceries, furniture, illumination ; but 
 light for them was only the lamp, and had nothing in common 
 with the spark from a flint, the flame of a candle, the brightness 
 of the moon. 
 
 ' One day Victorine asked, " What makes wood burn ? " Her 
 masters looked at one another in confusion ; the theory of com- 
 bustion was beyond them.' 
 
 And then a more serious difficulty showed itself: 
 
 * If one starts with facts, the simplest requires too complicated 
 explanations, and if one lays down principles first, one begins 
 with the absolute, with faith. 
 
 ' How can this be solved ? By combining the two methods of 
 instruction, the rational and the empirical ; but a double means 
 to one end is the reverse of methodical. So much the worse. 
 
 ' To initiate them in natural histoiy they ti'ied scientific ex- 
 cursions. "You see," said they, pointing to an ass, a horse, an 
 ox, " beasts with four legs, they are called quadrupeds. Gene- 
 rally speaking, birds have feathers, reptiles scales, and butter- 
 flies belong to the class of insects."
 
 352 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 * Then came the turn of botany. Pecuchet wrote this axiom 
 upon the blackboard: — "Every plant has leaves, a calyx, and 
 a corolla, enclosing an ovary or pericarp, which contains the 
 seed." 
 
 ' Then he ordered his pupils to go botanising in the country 
 and pluck the first flowers they found. 
 
 'Victor brought him buttercups, Victorine a tuft of straw- 
 berries. He sought in vain for the pericarp. 
 
 ' Bouvard, who distrusted his knowledge, rummaged in the 
 whole library and discovered, in the Redoide des Dairies the 
 picture of an iris, in which the ovaries were not situated in 
 the corolla, but beneath the petals in the stem. 
 
 * There were in the garden some burdocks and lilies of the 
 valley in flower ; these rubiaceae had no calyx ; therefore the 
 principle placed on the blackboard was false. 
 
 * " It is an exception," said Pecuchet. 
 
 * But chance caused them to discover a field-madder in the 
 grass, and it had a calyx. 
 
 ' " Oh, come ! if the exceptions themselves are not true, where 
 has one any confidence whatever ? " ' 
 
 At this time an educational visit to their farm brought 
 Bouvard into affectionate relations again with Madame 
 Bordin, and there is no knowing what might have happened 
 had not the farmer's horse got entangled in the drying-lines 
 and brought down the whole weekly wash. The farmer beat 
 his horse brutally ; Bouvard protested. ' It is mine,** said 
 the peasant. 
 
 Pecuchet then embarked on a course of morality ; Bouvard 
 attended the first lecture with the children. 
 
 * This science teaches us how to direct our actions. They 
 have two motives : pleasure, interest ; and a third still more 
 imperious, duty. 
 
 ' Duties are divided into two classes : — (1) Duties to ourselves, 
 which consist in taking care of our bodies, protecting ourselves 
 from all injury. They understood that perfectly. (2) "Duties
 
 IJFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 353 
 
 towards others, that is to say, to be always loyal, good-humoured, 
 and even fraternal, the human race being one single family. 
 Often a thing pleases us which injures our equals ; interest 
 differs from good, for good is in itself irreducible." The children 
 did not understand. He put off the sanction of duties till the 
 next time. 
 
 'In all that, according to Bouvard, he had not defined "the good." 
 ' " How would you that we should define it ? one feels it." 
 ' Then these lessons in morality would only suit moral people, 
 and Pecuchet's course went no further.' 
 
 The effect of rewards and punishments being tried upon 
 the childi-en, they were found to be delighted with praise, but 
 indifferent to blame. 
 
 In order to make them kind-hearted, they were given a 
 black cat. Victor boiled it alive. ' It was his own." 
 
 Things went from bad to worse; the friends consulted 
 Bentham. 
 
 'In order that a punishment be good, it should be propor- 
 tioned to the fault, its natural consequence. Has the child 
 broken a window, it should not be mended, let him suffer from 
 cold ; if he asks for food when he is not hungry, give it him, 
 indigestion will soon bring repentance ; if he is idle, let him 
 remain without work, boredom will soon bring him back to it. 
 
 ' But Victor would not suffer from cold, his constitution could 
 support excesses, and idleness would suit him.' 
 
 Victor even destroyed the cherished coco-nut of Pecuchet, 
 the companion of his life. Pecuchet forgot himself, and 
 delivered a blow which hurled Victor to the earth, who rose 
 in terror, fled to his room, and locked himself in. Fearing 
 that he might commit suicide, Bouvard negotiated with him, 
 and the bribe of a plum-tart induced him to open the door. 
 
 ' From that time he grew worse. There remained a method 
 highly extolled by Monseigneur Dupanloup : " the severe 
 stare"; they tried to impress a terrific aspect upon their 
 countenances, and produced no effect. 
 
 ' " We have nothing left but to try religion/' said Bouvard. 
 
 z
 
 354 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 'Pecuchet protested. They had banished it from their 
 programme.' 
 
 None the less the children were sent to catechism, and 
 Mademoiselle Reine once more shed the light of her gracious 
 countenance upon the establishment. 
 
 But Victor beat the son of the lawyer, and Victorine 
 made love to him. 
 
 A pedagogical mania now began to rage in the breasts of 
 the friends ; they were prepared to teach everything and 
 everybody ; they protested against the habit of crucifying 
 owls, wlio destroy mice ; but when they went further into 
 the habits of animals they discovered that ' sparrows cleanse 
 the cabbage-garden, but swallow cherries. Owls eat insects, 
 and also bats, which are useful ; and if moles devour slugs 
 they upset the soil ; of one thing they were certain, that all 
 game should be destroyed as being baneful to agriculture.' 
 
 This last dogma brought them into collision with Sorel, 
 the gamekeeper, whom they found arresting a poacher. 
 Their efforts on behalf of this ill-used personage brought 
 them before the magistrates, who fined them. They began 
 to make political speeches in the public-house. 
 
 'As they were accused of ignorance of practical life, of a 
 tendency to levelHng down, and to immorality, they developed 
 these three conceptions : to replace the family name by a 
 registered number ; to arrange the Fi-ench people in a hier- 
 archy ; in order to keep one's place, it would be necessary from 
 time to time to submit to an examination ; no more punish- 
 ments, no more rewards, but a special record in every village, 
 which would be handed down to posterity. 
 
 ' Contempt was poured on their system. They made an 
 article about it for the Bayeux daily paper, drew up a note to 
 the Prefect, a petition to the Chambers, a memorial to the 
 Emperoi*. 
 
 ' The paper did not insert their article. 
 
 ' The Prefect did not condescend to reply.
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 355 
 
 ' The Chambers were dumb, and for a long time they waited 
 for a scrap of paper from the Tuileries. 
 
 ' How in the world was the Emperor spending his time ? 
 Doubtless with women. 
 
 ' Foureau, on behalf of the Sub-Prefect, recommended them 
 a little more reserve.' 
 
 They plunged into plans for the improvement of Chavi- 
 gnolles, planned a hospital, slaughter-houses, a church. 
 Pecuchet could not sleep for thinking of Haussmann. 
 
 Victor and Victorine meanwhile gradually became intoler- 
 able ; the former was proved guilty of theft, the latter of 
 even worse ; and suddenly there came a letter from the wife 
 of Pecuchet's old friend, Dumouchel, asking for information 
 about sea-bathing on the coast of Normandy : where was to 
 be found the best society, the least noise ? What were the 
 means of transport, the cost of washing, etc. etc. ? 
 
 But the friends were too far gone on their schemes for 
 ameliorating humanity to pay any attention to such trivial 
 details ; having failed in the education of children they 
 projected a course of lectures for adults. 
 
 They had some difficulty in securing a room for the pur- 
 pose, but eventually persuaded the innkeeper to allow them 
 the larger hall of the Golden Cross. They betook themselves 
 to the inn, dressed with unusual care. 
 
 (At this point the completed ms. ends, but the outline of 
 the remainder of this chapter is in existence.) 
 
 ' . . . and met a large audience. Pecuchet spoke pedanti- 
 cally of the faults of the Government and administration ; 
 Bouvard familiarly ; the meeting broke up in great confusion. 
 
 ' The next morning they discoursed over their breakfast. 
 Pecuchet saw the future of mankind in dark colours. The 
 modern man has grown smaller, and become a machine. He 
 expected the final anarchy of the human race, and reasoned of 
 the impossibility of peace.
 
 356 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 ' Owing to the excesses of individualism and the delirium 
 of science bai-barism will ensue. He laid down three hypo- 
 theses : First, Pantheistic radicalism will break every tie with 
 the past, and an inhuman despotism will ensue ; second, if 
 the theistic absolutism triumphs, the libei-alism with which 
 humanity has been imbued since the Revolution succumbs, all 
 is reversed ; third, if the convulsions which have been going 
 on since '89 continue, oscillating endlessly between two ex- 
 tremes, these oscillations will carry us away by their own forces. 
 There will no longer be ideal, religion, morality. 
 
 ' America will have conquered the earth. 
 
 ' Future of literature. 
 
 ' Universal meanness. 
 
 'There will no longer be anything but a vast guzzling of 
 operatives. 
 
 ' End of the world by cessation of caloric. 
 
 ' Bouvard, on the other hand, saw the future of humanity 
 in rose-colour. 
 
 ' The modern man is in progress. 
 
 ' Europe will be regenerated by Asia, the law of history 
 being that civilisation goes from east to west ; the part to 
 be played by China ; the two humanities will eventually be 
 mingled. 
 
 ' Inventions of the future ; methods of travelling. Balloons. 
 Submarine boats with glass windows, which will move in a 
 perpetual calm, the motion of the waves being only superficial. 
 Fish will be seen passing by, and landscapes at the bottom of 
 the ocean. All animals will be domesticated, all methods of 
 agriculture exploited. 
 
 'The future of literature ; the opposite of industrial literature. 
 The future of science — magnetic force will be regulated. 
 
 ' Paris will become a winter gax-den ; fruit-trees on the Boule- 
 vards. The Seine warmed and filtered ; artificial precious stones 
 will abound ; gilt everywhere ; houses lighted by new methods 
 — indeed, light will be stored ; there are bodies possessing this 
 property, such as sugar, the flesh of certain molluscs, Bologna 
 phosphorus. People will be obliged to daub the front of their 
 houses with luminous paint, and the radiation will light up the 
 streets.
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 357 
 
 'Evil will disappear because there will be no need for evil. 
 Philosophy will be a religion. 
 
 ' Union of all nations. Public festivities. We shall travel 
 to the heavenly bodies ; and, when the earth is worn out, 
 humanity will decamp to the stars. 
 
 * These glorious anticipations were rudely interrupted by the 
 arrival of the police with a warrant from the Sub-Prefect to 
 arrest Bouvard and Pecuchet. 
 
 ' In the midst of the hubbub Dumouchel and his wife turned 
 up on their way to sea ; gradually the whole village penetrated 
 into the garden and house. Barberou appeared in time to hear 
 Bouvard accused by Gorju of having seduced Melie ; and 
 believed him guilty. 
 
 •' Eventually the friends undertook to reform themselves, 
 and a second warrant from the Sub-Prefect was exhibited by 
 Foureau, empowering hira to accept their submission. Bouvard 
 pensioned Melie. The children were removed by the mayor, 
 and showed a revolting insensibility on being taken away, 
 insomuch that Bouvard and Pecuchet wept. 
 
 ' So everything had failed in their hands ; and they had no 
 further interest in life. 
 
 ' A good idea was, however, secretly cherished by both of 
 them ; for some time they dissembled ; at last they simul- 
 taneously disclosed it. 
 
 ' "^ Copy as they used to." 
 
 'They bought a double desk, books, pens, sandaracum, 
 erasers, and so forth, and set to work.' 
 
 Thus did Flaubert propose that the first part of his 
 'revenge"' should end. The second part was to contain a 
 carefully classified list of all the contradictions and absurdi- 
 ties that he had encountered in his reading. On the whole, 
 it is perhaps fortunate that he did not live to carry out this 
 idea ; which is in itself inartistic. There are not many men 
 who would have the patience to read an encyclopaedia of 
 errors. 
 
 One difficulty may occur to the reader of the foregoing 
 abstract of Bouvard et Pecuchet-^ after all, the friends are
 
 358 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 not complete fools ; they are not invariably mistaken. 
 Flaubert was too skilful an artist to make such an oversight 
 as this ; one of the chief merits of the work is that the 
 reader has continually to exert his own acuteness in order to 
 see where the satire is bearing ; and in this way its interest 
 is maintained. The friends, moreover, by the mere fact that 
 they do take trouble to learn, are always superior to the 
 men of accepted opinions around them. Bouvard not unfre- 
 quently says exactly the right thing. And this is perhaps 
 an additional stroke of satire, that the right thing should be 
 not unfrequently said by the man whom the ordinary person 
 writes down fool. 
 
 Li what sense is this book ' a revenge \? 'Of what,** asks 
 Maxime Ducamp, ' had Flaubert to avenge himself ? ' 
 
 Personally of nothing, but in the name of knowledge and 
 earnestness, of the levity and ignorance which take the chief 
 places in the synagogue. 
 
 Decordes was a fool ; Louis Bouilhet was something near 
 to a genius ; but Decordes was the poet beloved of Rouen. 
 
 Everywhere in life we meet with the man who has not 
 attempted to learn, with the man who has been content 
 to smatter, who has swallowed manuals, attended popular 
 lectures, and these with one accord pass judgment, com- 
 mendatory or the reverse, upon the student whose life has 
 been given to learning. It was the student whom Flaubert 
 wished to avenge upon the multitude, not himself only, but 
 all those who recognise the sacred obligation of fearlessly, 
 earnestly inquiring after the truth.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Acropolis, Madame Colet's poem 
 
 on the, 148. 
 Adramites, the, 97. 
 Aksar, the Python, 97. 
 Alexandria, Flaubert's description of, 
 
 102, 103. 
 Amyot, Sieur, 16. 
 Anatomy, study of, commenced by 
 
 ' Bouvard et Pecuchet,' 308. 
 Andelys, Les, i, 2, 7, 17. 
 Angelo, Michael, 151. 
 Angouleme, Duke of, history of, 
 
 written by ' Bouvard et Pecuchet,' 
 
 317-320. 
 ApoUonius of Tyana, 89. 
 Arabs, Flaubert on the manners of 
 
 the, 106. 
 Archaeology, study of, commenced 
 
 by 'Bouvard et Pecuchet,' 315, 
 
 316. 
 Arcontics, the, 87. 
 Aristophanes, 75, 248, 296. 
 Arnoux, Madame, 138. 
 Aromates, the, 97. 
 Art, Flaubert on, 143, 144. 
 ' Art for Art's sake,' 245-248. 
 Athens, Meeting of Flaubert and 
 
 English midshipmen at, 119. 
 Azvedo, 151, 152. 
 
 Bedmaker, Dialogue with the, 21, 
 
 22. 
 Bekker, The 'Charicles' of, 217. 
 Bentham, quoted, 353. 
 Beranger, Flaubert on, 35, 61, 78. 
 Bertha, Madame Bovary's daughter, 
 
 169, 171, 174. 
 
 Binet, in Madame Bovary, 189, 192. 
 
 Bordin, Widow, character in ' Bouvard 
 et Pecuchet,' 306, 309, 316, 320, 
 321, 322, 324, 330. 
 
 Botany, Flaubert and the study of, 
 299, 300 ; ' Bouvard et Pecuchet ' 
 attempt to teach, 352. 
 
 Bouilhet, Louis, poet, friend of Flau- 
 bert, 6, 43 ; account of, 54-58 ; on 
 Flaubert as a poet, 74 ; his opinion 
 of Flaubert's ' St. Anthony,' 83 ; 
 Flaubert's letter to, from Cairo, 
 103, 104 ; Flaubert's second letter 
 to, from Cairo, 106, 107 ; letter 
 from Flaubert to, on literary ques- 
 tions, 113, 114; letter from Flaubert 
 to, on the changes in Eastern life, 
 118, 119; Madame Colet's jealousy 
 of, 152 ; manuscript of ' Madame 
 Bovary' submitted to, 192 ; corres- 
 pondence of Flaubert with, anent 
 material for ' Madame Bovary,' 
 196, 197, 198; death of, 238; 
 friendship between Flaubert and, 
 236, 240 ; Flaubert's preface to the 
 posthumous volume of poems of, 
 241-244; cold reception of his 
 posthumous poems, 269 ; proposed 
 memorial to, 248; Flaubert's regrets 
 for the death of, 254 ; mentioned, 
 80, 84,99, "5. 127, 129, 132, 133, 
 134, 136, 138, 148, 153, 154, 155, 
 156, 270, 282, 284, 291, 358. 
 
 Boulanger, M. Rodolph, character in 
 'Madame Bovary,' 176, 177, l8g, 
 191. 
 
 Bournisien, Abbe, in 'Madame
 
 360 
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 Bovary,' 173, 179, 191, 192, 237 ; 
 
 administers the last sacrament to 
 
 Madame Bovary, 190, 191. 
 ' Bouvard et Pecuchet,' Flaubert's 
 
 labours on, 287 ; Flaubert's method 
 
 of working on, 298, 299 ; the plot 
 
 of, 304, 305 ; conclusion of, 300 ; 
 
 summary of the story of, 305-358 ; 
 
 criticism of the work, 301-305 ; 
 
 mentioned, 16, 43, 44, 99, 271, 
 
 284, 290, 293. 
 Breughel's picture of St. Anthony'.s 
 
 Temptation, 36, 280, 
 Brittany, Tour by Flaubert and 
 
 Ducamp through, 69 ; Flaubert's 
 
 health benefited by tour in, 77. 
 Bruyere, La, quoted, 295. 
 Buddha, 89. 
 Buffon, quoted, 241. 
 Byron, Lord, mentioned, 12, 37, 148, 
 
 296. 
 
 C/F.SAR, the first, 33. 
 
 Cainites, the, 87. 
 
 Cairo, Flaubert's description of his 
 
 life at, 103, 104. 
 Cambremer, Mademoiselle, 5. 
 'Candidate, the,' Flaubert's comedy 
 
 of, 271, 286, 287. 
 Carlyle, mentioned, 127, 247, 301, 
 
 302. 
 Carpocratians, the, 87. 
 Carthage, the scene of Flaubert's 
 
 Salammbo, 202 ; visited by Flaubert, 
 
 122. 
 Catoblepas, the, 95, 96. 
 Cervantes, mentioned, 296, 301, 302. 
 Charpentier, 298. 
 Chase, mediaeval saints connected 
 
 with the, 272. 
 Chateaubriand, mentioned, 12, 37, 
 
 296 ; the tomb of, at St. Malo, 74. 
 Chatelet, Madame, Madame Colet's 
 
 life of, 136. 
 Chemistry, study of, commenced by 
 
 'Bouvard et Pecuchet,' 307. 
 Chevalier, Ernest, letters of Gustave 
 
 Flaubert to, i, 2 ; intimate friend 
 of Flaubert, 6, 8 ; letter from Flau- 
 bert to, anent his theatre, 7 ; letter 
 from Flaubert to, on the censorship 
 of the stage, 13 , goes to Paris to 
 read law, 16 ; further letter to, in 
 Paris, 22-24 ; Flaubert's letter to, 
 on student life in Quartier Latin, 
 30 ; letter to, from Flaubert, 44 ; 
 his marriage, 118; congratulated 
 by Flaubert on his marriage, 120. 
 
 Churches, Flaubert's reflections on 
 provincial, 72, 73. 
 
 Circoncellions, the, 87. 
 
 Cloots, Anarchist, 290, 291. 
 
 Cloquet, Dr. Jules, 19, 82 ; letter 
 from Flaubert to, anent the prosecu- 
 tion of ' Madame Bovary,' 201. 
 
 Colet, Madame Louise, Ducamp's 
 account of her literary works, etc., 
 129-133, 135 ; her ' Lui et Elle,' 
 129 ; her ' Une liistoire de Soldat,' 
 135; her ' Lui,' 129, 133, 135 ; 
 her 'Elle et Lui,' 129; Flaubert's 
 correspondence with, 138-155 ; her 
 'La Sei-vante' (poem), 135; her 
 'La Servante' (prose), 133, 135; 
 her life of Madame Chatelet, 136 ; 
 her poem on the Acropolis, 14S ; 
 specimen of her poetical powers, 
 150; her love for Flaubert, 133, 
 134; Flaubert's admiration for, 
 ^37f 138; her jealousy of Bouilhet, 
 152; Ducamp's epitaph on, 133; 
 her death in 1875, I33> I35- 
 
 Collier, Admiral, family of, 9, 25 ; 
 
 Miss Gertrude. 6'(;eTennant, Mrs. 
 
 Colosseum, the, 88. 
 
 Commanville, Madame, 27 ; descrip- 
 tion of Flaubert's home-life at 
 Croisset by, 123-126 ; letter to, 
 announcing speedy end of ' Bou- 
 vard et Pecuchet,' 300. 
 
 M., failure of, 270; Flaubert's 
 
 generosity to, 2S8. 
 
 Comte, Auguste, Flaubert's opinion 
 of his philosophy, 113, 285.
 
 INDEX 
 
 361 
 
 Coptic bishop in Cairo, Flaubert's 
 
 visit to the, 105. 
 Cormenin, Louis de, 132 ; letter from 
 
 Flaubert to, 34-36. 
 Corneille, Pierre, 282, 296 ; quoted, 
 
 241. 
 Cousin, Victor, 133, 136. 
 Croisset, Flaubert's removal to, 37, 
 
 38; Flaubert's home life at, 122- 
 
 126. 
 Cruchard, name assumed by Flaubert, 
 
 281, 286, 287, 288. 
 Rev. Father, sham autobiography 
 
 of, 20. 
 Cynocephali, the, 95. 
 
 Damis, follower of Apollonius, 89. 
 
 Danseh, the ceremony of the, 107, 
 108. 
 
 Dante, mentioned, 304. 
 
 Daudet, Alphonse, 270, 298. 
 
 Death, Flaubert on, 41, 42. 
 
 Decorde, M., of Rouen, 291. 
 
 Delaunay, a pupil of Dr. Flaubert, 
 100, 178; the prototype of Bovary 
 in ' Madame Bovary,' 157, 158. 
 
 Derozerays, M.,in 'Madame Bovary,' 
 177. 
 
 Devil, the, in Flaubert's ' St. An- 
 thony,' 85, 92, 93, 94. 
 
 Dickens, mentioned, 247 ; Flaubert 
 on the ' Pickwick ' of, 281. 
 
 Dictionary of accepted opinions, 
 Flaubert's, 113, 304. 
 
 Don Quixote, 147. 
 
 Ducamp, Maxime, his description of 
 Flaubert at age of twenty-one, 20 ; 
 his description of Flaubert's law 
 studies, 25, 26 ; his description of 
 Flaubert's life in Paris, 27 ; travels 
 with Flaubert, 32 ; account of his 
 friendship for Flaubert, 33, 34 ; 
 letter from Flaubert to, on death of 
 Caroline Flaubert, 38-40 ; letter 
 from Flaubert to, on death, future 
 life, and his plans for future work, 
 40-42 ; on Flaubert's love for his 
 
 mother, 44, 45 ; tour through Brit- 
 tany with Flaubert, 69 et seq. ; 
 wounded in the tumults of 1848, 
 72 ; proposed eastern tour with 
 Flaubert, 82 ; on the temptation 
 of St. Anthony, 83 ; his criticism 
 of Flaubert's 'St. Anthony,' 96; 
 eastern journey with Flaubert, loi; 
 his care of Flaubert, 103 ; account 
 of incident between Flaubert and 
 himself in the desert, no, in; 
 receives letter from Madame Flau- 
 bert imploring their return, 114; 
 his epitaph on Madame Colet, 133; 
 his 'Souvenirs Litteraires,' 134; 
 his slight control over Flaubert, 
 137 ; manuscript of ' Madame 
 Bovary' submitted to, 192 ; ' Ma- 
 dame Bovary' sent to, 198; his 
 opinion of Flaubert's Salammbo, 
 202 ; letter from Flaubert to, after 
 the death of Bouilhet, 239 ; letter 
 from Flaubert on the Franco- 
 Prussian war to, 259, 260 ; men- 
 tioned, 43, 66, 84, 99, 107, 120, 
 156, 178, 182, 183, 244, 248, 271, 
 280, 35S. 
 
 Dupanloup, Monseigneur, 17; Flau- 
 bert's opinion of, 292. 
 
 Duplan, Jules, Flaubert's letter to, 
 239- 
 
 Dupuis, M. Leon, a character in 
 'Madame Bovary,' 166, 167, 169, 
 170, 174, 179, 180, 181, 187, 188, 
 189, 191. 
 
 ' Education Sentimentale,' ac- 
 count of Flaubert's, 221, 251-254 ; 
 mentioned, 16, 33, 46, 98, 240. 
 
 Egypt, English occupation of, pre- 
 dicted, 106. 
 
 Eliot, George, 194, 195, 247. 
 
 ' Elle et Lui,' Louise Colet's, 129. 
 
 England, Flaubert on the occupation 
 of Egypt by, 106 ; visited by Flau- 
 bert, 121. 
 
 Ennoia, the woman, 88, 89.
 
 362 
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 Faverges, Comte de, character in 
 ' Bouvard et Pecuchet,' 306, 315, 
 316, 322, 328, 329, 335, 337, 345- 
 347. 
 
 Felicite, Madame Bovary's maid, 
 171, 183. 
 
 Feydeau, Ernest, 135 ; Flaubert's 
 correspondence with, 225, 226. 
 
 Fiction, power of, to influence the 
 national mind, 10, li. 
 
 ' Flamarande,' George Sand's story, 
 288. 
 
 Flaubert, Achille Cleophas, father of 
 Gustave, 3, 4, 37, 157; his mis- 
 tress, 64 ; death of, at Croisset, 38. 
 
 Caroline, sister of Gustave, 27 ; 
 
 marriage of, to Hamard, 36, 38 ; 
 her death at Croisset, 38, 39. 
 
 Gustave, his parentage, 3-5; his 
 
 first letter to Ernest Chevalier, i ; 
 his last published letter to the same, 
 2 ; school days of, 6 ; his simplicity 
 in childhood, 5, 6 ; his description 
 of his father in 'Madame Bovary,' 
 3, 4; letter to Ernest Chevalier 
 from, anent his theatre, 7 ; early 
 taste for literature, 7 ; Mrs. Ten- 
 nant's description of, 9 ; early read- 
 ing of, 12 ; on the establishment of 
 the censorship of the stage, 13 ; 
 his letter to Ernest Chevalier in 
 Paris, 16 ; on the study of mathe- 
 matics, 17 ; goes to Paris to study 
 law, 19 : irregularity of his law 
 studies, 26 ; rejected at the law ex- 
 amination, 30, 3 1 ; letter to Chevalier 
 in Paris, 22-24 ; on ambition, 28 ; 
 develops a fit of economy, 28, 29 ; 
 introduced to Victor Hugo, 29 ; 
 on student life in the Quartier Latin, 
 30 ; seized with an hysterico-epi- 
 leptic attack, 32 ; references to his 
 malady, 143, 149, 223, 283 ; letter 
 to Louis dc Cormenin on literary 
 criticism, 34-36 ; a hero-worshipper, 
 37 ; his letter to Ducamp on the 
 death of his sister Caroline, 38-40 ; 
 
 letter to Ducamp on death and 
 future life, and his plans for future 
 work, 40-42 ; his disgust of middle- 
 class life, 43, 44 ; the two love 
 passions of, 46 ; love letters of, 
 with the Parisian poetess, 47-53, 
 59-68 ; his letter to Mrs. Tennant 
 on her leaving Paris, 65, 66 ; on 
 methods in study, 67, 68 ; makes a 
 tour through Brittany with Ducamp, 
 69, et seq ; not always a comfort- 
 able fellow-traveller, 71; and the 
 'young phenomenon,' 71 ; on 
 churches and the Lady Chapel of 
 Pont L'Abbe, 72, 73 ; reflections 
 on the tomb of Chateaubriand, 74 ; 
 contrariness of, in his writings and 
 actions, 75, 76 ; his health benefited 
 by tour in Brittany, 77 ; on style, 
 
 77 ; at a reform dinner in Rouen, 
 
 78 ; watches at deathbed of Alfred 
 de Poittevin, 79, 80 ; proposed 
 eastern tour by, 82 ; his love of 
 mere names, 97 ; his retentive 
 memory, 98 ; departs on his eastern 
 tour, loi ; description of the land- 
 ing at Alexandria, 102, 103 ; letter 
 to Bouilhet from Cairo, 103, 104 ; 
 visits the Coptic bishop, 105 ; on 
 the English occupation of Egypt, 
 106 ; second letter to Bouilhet from 
 Cairo, 106, 107 ; makes acquaint- 
 ance of the Governor of Ibrim, 109, 
 1 10 ; incident in the desert between 
 Ducamp and, no, in ; letter to 
 his mother relating his amusements 
 in Cairo, in, 112; letter to Bouilhet 
 from Damascus on literary matters, 
 113, 114; visits Nazareth, 114; 
 returns home from eastern tour, 
 114 ; letter from to ' Uncle Parain,' 
 115; letter to his mother on the 
 education of his niece, 116; his 
 views on matrimony, 117, 118 ; on 
 marriage, 283 ; letter to Bouilhet 
 on the changes in eastern life, 118, 
 119; meeting with English mid-
 
 INDEX 
 
 363 
 
 shipmen at Athens, 119 ; on friend- 
 ship, 119, 120; congratulates 
 Ernest Chevalier on his marriage, 
 120, 121 ; his growing baldness, 
 120, 121; visits Carthage, 122; 
 home life at Croisset, 122-126 ; the 
 ' Leonce' of Madame Colet's ' Lui,' 
 129, 133 ; introduced to Madame 
 Colet, 131, 132; inquires of 
 Bouilhet anent 'the Muse,' 134, 
 135 ; letter to Madame des Genettes 
 on the death of Madame Colet^ 
 135 ; his admiration for Madame 
 Colet, 137, 138; his correspondence 
 with Madame Colet, 138-155; on 
 Shakespeare, 36, 62, 147, 148 ; re- 
 vises Madame Colet's MS. poem on 
 the Acropolis, 148 ; prosecuted for 
 the publicationof 'Madame Bovary, ' 
 156 ; correspondence with Bouilhet 
 anent material for 'Madame Bovary ,' 
 196-198 ; letter to Laurence Pichat 
 anent 'Madame Bovary,' 198, 199; 
 letter to Madame Schlesinger anent 
 prosecution of ' Madame Bovary,' 
 199, 200; prosecution of, for publish- 
 ing ' Madame Bovary,' 199, 201 ; 
 letter to Jules Cloquet, anent his 
 prosecution over ' Madame Bovary,' 
 201 ; his occupations after the pub- 
 lication of Salammbo, 220 ; corres- 
 pondence with Madame Roger des 
 Genettes, 222, 228, 230, 231 ; his 
 correspondence with Mademoiselle 
 Leroyer de Chantepie, 221-225, 
 226-228, 232-234 ; correspondence 
 with Ernest Feydeau, 225, 226 ; his 
 labours over the literary remains of 
 Bouilhet, 238 ; letter to Jules Du- 
 plan on Bouilhet's death, 239 ; letter 
 to Ducamp after the death of Bouil- 
 het, 239 ; friendship between Bouil- 
 het and, 239, 240 ; his preface to 
 Bouilhet's posthumous volume of 
 poems, 241-244 ; his letter to the 
 municipal council of Rouen, 249, 
 250 : letter to George Sand anent 
 
 the reviews of his ' Education Sen- 
 timentale,' 251, 252 ; his regrets for 
 Bouilhet's death, 254 ; letter to 
 Edmond de Goncourt on his loss by 
 Bouilhet's death, 254, 255 ; distaste 
 for politics, 255 ; his correspondence 
 with George Sand during 1870-71, 
 255-268 ; extract from letter of to 
 Claudius Popelin, 259 ; refers to 
 Franco-Prussian War in a letter to 
 de Goncourt, 259; letter from, 
 to Madame Regnier, 261 ; extract 
 of letter of, to Madame des Genettes, 
 268 ; his mother's death, 268 ; his 
 occupations after the war, 269, 
 270 ; the literary work of his 
 last years, 271, 272 ; generosity 
 of, to the family of M. Comman- 
 ville, 270, 288; on Dickens's 
 ' Pickwick,' 281 ; letter to George 
 Sand on death ofTheophile Gautier, 
 281, 282; letter to George Sand 
 anent Levy the publisher, 284 ; 
 letter to Madame Genettes anent 
 Levy the publisher, 285 ; his opinion 
 of George Sand, 285 ; his labours 
 over the composition of ' Bouvard 
 et Pecuchet,' 287 ; extract from 
 letter of, to M. Zola, 288 ; solicits 
 friends for aid for his ' Bouvard et 
 Pecuchet,' 290 ; letter to Guy de 
 Maupassant, 291 ; his opinion of 
 Herbert Spencer, 292 ; his opinion 
 on Dupanloup, 292 ; letter from to 
 Guy de Maupassant defending him 
 from the charge of immorality, 294- 
 297 ; his method of working on 
 'Bouvard et Pecuchet,' 298, 299 ; 
 his death, 300; his 'Bouvard et 
 Pecuchet,' 305-358 ; his ' Madame 
 Bovary,' 158-195 ; summary of his 
 ' Salammbo,' 202, 207 ; his own 
 estimate of the work, 207, 208 ; 
 his defence of the work against the 
 criticism of M. Froehner, 208-216; 
 his comedy 'The Candidate,' 271, 
 286, 287 ; his ' Education Sentimen-
 
 364 
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 tale,' account of, 221, 251-254; pub- 
 lication of his 'Education Sentimen- 
 tale,'25i ; his 'St. Julian, '273-280; 
 his tragedy of Jenner, or the Dis- 
 coveryofVaccine,'56-58; analysis of 
 the ' Temptation of St. Anthony,' 
 82-99 ; liis conception of St. An- 
 thony, 96 ; his ' Novembre,'40, 41. 
 
 Flaubert, Madame, mother of Gustave, 
 Flaubert's letter to, from Malta, 
 loi, 102 ; Flaubert's letter to, from 
 Cairo, 107-109; second letter to, 
 from Cairo, III, 112; death of, 268. 
 
 Fontaine, La, 296, 
 
 Fortin, doctor, 298. 
 
 Fossils, collected by ' Bouvard et 
 Pecuchet,' 311, 312, 
 
 Foureau, M. , character in ' Bouvard et 
 Pecuchet,' 306, 323, 345-347, 34^, 
 357- 
 
 France and Frenchmen : repression of 
 freedom in France, 11 ; French 
 least understand liberty, 10; French 
 poetry, melody of, 240 ; French 
 doctor in Cairo, writer of tragedies, 
 III. 
 
 Franco-Prussian war of 1870, 252 ; 
 references to the, in Flaubert's 
 letters to George Sand, 255-266. 
 
 Friendship, Flaubert on, 119, 120. 
 
 Froehner, M., Flaubert's reply to his 
 criticism of ' Salammbo,' 208-216. 
 
 Gangarides, the, 97. 
 
 Gautier, Theophile, 23 ; letter from 
 Flaubert to George Sand on the 
 death of, 281, 282 ; death of, 269. 
 
 Genettes, Charles Roger des, 222. 
 
 Madame Roger des, Flaubert's 
 
 correspondence with, 222, 228, 230, 
 231 ; Flaubert's letter to, on the 
 death of 'the Muse,' 135 ; extract 
 of letter of Flaubert to, 268 ; Flau- 
 bert's letter to, anent paying Levy 
 the publisher, 285 ; letter to, on 
 plot of 'A Simple Soul,' 289; 
 Flaubert's remarks to, anent his 
 
 reading for ' Bouvard et Pecuchet,' 
 293, 294; references to, 270, 290. 
 
 Geography ' Bouvard et Pecuchet,' 
 attempt to teach, 350, 351. 
 
 Geology, study of, commenced by 
 ' Bouvard et Pecuchet,' 312.315. 
 
 Goethe, mentioned, 227, 234, 241, 
 296, 301, 
 
 Goncourt, Edmond de, letter from 
 Flaubert to, on his loss by Bouil- 
 het's death, 254, 255 ; reference 
 to Franco-Prussian war in a letter 
 by Flaubert to, 259 ; extract from 
 letter of Flaubert to about state of 
 his health, 293 ; mentioned, 298. 
 
 Gorju, a character in ' Bouvard et 
 Pecuchet,' 315, 320, 323, 324, 339, 
 
 , 357- 
 
 Guerand, Flaubert and Ducamp at 
 the fair of, 71. 
 
 IIamard, a friend of Flaubert, im- 
 prisonment of, 27 ; marries Caroline 
 Flaubert, 27, 38. 
 
 Hamilcar, in ' Salammbo,' 202-207. 
 
 Hassan, Flaubert's Dragoman, 104, 
 105. 
 
 Heliogabalus, Flaubert on, 35. 
 
 ' Herodias,' Flaubert's, 16, 272, 
 
 Herodotus quoted, 50. 
 
 Hilarion, a character in Flaubert's 
 ' St. Anthony,' 86, 89, 91, 92. 
 
 Hippolyte, ostler at the Golden Lion, 
 in ' Madame Bovary,' 178. 
 
 History, study of, commenced by 
 ' Bouvard et Pecuchet,' 317. 
 
 Homais, H., a character in 'Madame 
 Bovary,' 165, 168, 169, 170, 175, 
 176, 178, 179, 183-186, 190, 191, 
 192, 196, 197, 237. 
 
 Homer, Flaubert's opinion of, 36. 
 
 Homeric Poems, the, 304. 
 
 Homerites, the, 97. 
 
 Horace mentioned, 75, 121, 296. 
 
 Hugo, Victor, Flaubert's account of 
 his introduction to, 29 ; mentioned, 
 12, 27, 37, 104, 137, 147, 148, 220.
 
 INDEX 
 
 365 
 
 Ibrim, the Governor of, 109. 
 Immorality, Guy de Maupassant 
 
 charged with, 294. 
 Isis, the goddess, 90. 
 
 Jaffa, the smells of, 149. 
 
 'Jenner, or the Discovery of Vaccine,' 
 
 Flaubert's tragedy of, 56-58. 
 Jeufroy, Abbe, character in ' Bouvard 
 
 et Pecuchet,' 306, 312, 313, 316, 
 
 323, 326-328, 329, 331, 336, 337, 
 
 340, 345-347, 349- 
 Julie, M'amselle, Flaubert's old nurse, 
 
 128. 
 
 Kipling, Rudyard, 157. 
 Knouphis, 87, 88. 
 
 La Fayette, Marquis de, i. 
 
 Lagardy, singer, 179. 
 
 Langlois, 13. 
 
 Lebanon, adoration of the cedars in, 
 114. 
 
 Lefebure, the philosophy of, 294, 
 
 Leghorn, earthquake at, 59, 60. 
 
 Lemaitre, Jules, 298. 
 
 Leroyer de Chantepie, Mademoiselle, 
 Flaubert's correspondence with, 
 221-225, 226-228, 232-234. 
 
 Levy, publisher of Bouilhet's posthu- 
 mous poems, 269, 284, 285. 
 
 Lheureux, M., character in * Madame 
 Bovary,' 170, 1S7, 188. 
 
 Literature, the province of, 245-248. 
 
 ' Lui ' of Madame Colet, 129, 133. 
 
 ' Lui et Elle,' Louise Colet's, 129. 
 
 'Madame Bovary,' origin of the 
 story, 100 ; the making of, 196- 
 198; publication of, 156; sum- 
 mary of the story of, 158-195; 
 prosecution of, as immoral, 199- 
 201 ; effects of reading, and similar 
 works, 193, 194 ; Flaubert's de- 
 scription of his father in, 3, 4 ; 
 mentioned, 99, 122, 128, 129, 133, 
 138, 140, 234, 237, 271, 272, 295. 
 
 Magus, Simon, 88, 89. 
 
 Malta, Flaubert's letter to his mother 
 from, loi, 102. 
 
 Marescot, M., character in 'Bouvard 
 et Pecuchet,' 306, 322, 
 
 Marie, Ernest le, friend of Flaubert, 
 6, 20. 
 
 Marmontel, mentioned, 12, 56, dT. 
 
 Marriage, Flaubert on, 283 ; ' Bou- 
 vard et Pecuchet ' on, 346, 347. 
 
 Mathematics, Flaubert's distaste for, 
 
 17. 
 
 Mathilde, the Princess, 220. 
 
 Matho, a character in ' Salammbo,' 
 203, 204, 205, 206, 218. 
 
 Matrimony, Flaubert's views on, 117, 
 118. 
 
 Maupassant, Guy de, letter from 
 Flaubert to, announcing commence- 
 ment of ' Bouvard et Pecuchet,' 
 287 ; invited to Croisset, 298 ; 
 Flaubert's letter to, about women, 
 etc., 291 ; threatened prosecution 
 of, for immorality, 294 ; mentioned, 
 8, 157, 219, 270. 
 
 Medicine, study of, commenced by 
 ' Bouvard et Pecuchet,' 309. 
 
 Melie, housemaid, character in ' Bou- 
 vard et Pecuchet,' 320, 330, 331, 
 
 357. 
 Messalians, the, 87. 
 Mignot, Father, 2, 5. 
 Milton, mentioned, 245. 
 Mirag, the, 97. 
 Moliere, mentioned, 57, 113, 151, 
 
 296. 
 Montaigne, mentioned, 12. 
 Monville, near Rouen, waterspout at, 
 
 44. 
 Musset, Alfred de, 129, 133, 142. 
 Myrmecoleo, the, 97. 
 
 Narcisse, Flaubert's servant, 128. 
 Narrhavas, a character in, ' Salamm- 
 bo,' 206, 207. 
 Nazareth, Flaubert at, 114. 
 Nebuchadnezzar, 86.
 
 366 
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 Nero, Flaubert's opinion of, 35. 
 Nicolaitans, the, 87. 
 ' Novembre,' a romance of Flaubert's, 
 40, 41. 
 
 Cannes, the god, 89, 90. 
 Olympus, the gods of, 90. 
 Ophidians, the, 88. 
 Optimism, Flaubert on, 76. 
 Orlowski, Polish refugee, 13. 
 
 Pantheon of Rome, 121. 
 
 Parain, uncle, a relative of Flaubert's, 
 114, IIS, "7> 124. 
 
 'Paries Champs et par les Grcves,' 
 Flaubert's, 70, 72. 
 
 Pastinaca, the, 97. 
 
 Paternians, the, 87. 
 
 Pei'rault, mentioned, 296. 
 
 Petit, schoolmaster, character in 
 'Bouvard et Pecuchet,' 323, 325- 
 328. 
 
 Phrenology, study of commenced by 
 ' Bouvard et Pecuchet,' 349, 350. 
 
 Physiology, study of, commenced by 
 ' Bouvard et Pecuchet, ' 308. 
 
 Pichat, Laurence, editor of ' Revue 
 de Paris,' 178, 183 ; letter to, from 
 Flaubert anent ' Madame Bovary,' 
 198, 199. 
 
 Pinard, council for the prosecution 
 against the author of ' Madame 
 Bovary,' 292, 293. 
 
 Planche, Gustave, 27. 
 
 Plato, mentioned, 302. 
 
 Play-writing commenced by ' Bouvard 
 et Pecuchet,' 321, 322. 
 
 Poittevin, Alfred de, friend of Flau- 
 bert, 6, 8, 227, 270 ; account of, 43, 
 44 ; inspires Flaubert's ' St. An- 
 thony,' 99 ; death of, 79 ; his death- 
 bed watched by Flaubert, 79, 80. 
 
 Politics, study of commenced by 
 ' Bouvard et Pecuchet,' 329, 330, 
 354. 
 
 Pompey's Pillar, 115. 
 
 Pont L'Abbc, the Lady Chapel of, 73. 
 
 Popelin, Claudius, extract from letter 
 
 of Flaubert to, 259. 
 Pradier, sculptor in Paris, 25, 29, 46, 
 
 60, 137; introduces Flaubert to 
 
 Madame Colet, 131, 132. 
 Presteros, the, 97. 
 Prevost, the Abbe, 123. 
 Priscillathe prophetess, 87. 
 Priscillanians, the, 87. 
 Prussia, Flaubert on the war with, 
 
 252, 255-266. 
 Pyramids, visited by Flaubert, 104, 
 
 106. 
 
 ()UARTIER Latin, Flaubert's account 
 of student life in the, 30. 
 
 Rabbetana, a goddess, 204. 
 
 Rabelais, mentioned, 12, 151, 245, 
 296, 301, 302. 
 
 Railway between Paris and Rouen, 
 opening of, 26. 
 
 Regnier, Madame, letter from Flaubert 
 to, 261. 
 
 Religion, Flaubert on, 228-230, 232, 
 233 ; study of, commenced by 
 ' Bouvard et Pecuchet,' 337-347' 
 
 Renan, Flaubert on, 268. 
 
 Revoil, Antoine, father of Madame 
 Colet, 131. 
 
 'Revue de Paris,' publication of 
 ' Madame Bovary ' in, 156, 
 
 Rolet, Mere, 169. 
 
 Rome, visited by Flaubert, 121. 
 
 Rouault, Pere, a character in ' Madame 
 Bovary,' 160. 
 
 Rouen, Bouilhet elected librarian of, 
 240 ; Flaubert's letter to the Muni- 
 cipal Council of, 249, 250; window 
 in the Cathedral of, suggests the 
 story of St. Julian to Flaubert, 280. 
 
 Rousseau, Flaubert's opinion of, 231 ; 
 mentioned, 296, 299. 
 
 Sachalites, the, 97. 
 'St. Anthony,' Temptation of, Flau- 
 bert's original suggestion of, 36, 280 ;
 
 INDEX 
 
 367 
 
 Flaubert's conception of what it 
 should be, 96 ; analysis of the, 82- 
 99 ; should rightly be named a 
 'Vision,' 98; mentioned, 14, 15, 
 43. 77, 107, 216, 220, 222, 229, 
 237, 255. 256, 263, 271, 280. 
 
 St. Eustace, 272, 273. 
 
 St. Hubert, 272, 273. 
 
 ' St. Julian I'Hospitalier,' Flaubert's, 
 16, 98, 99, 114, 271, 272; summary 
 of the story of, 273-280. 
 
 St. Peter's, Rome, 121. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, Charles- Augustin, letter 
 from Flaubert to, anent ' Salammbo, ' 
 207, 208 ; Flaubert on, 35. 
 
 Salammbo, outlines of thestoryof, 202, 
 207 ; Flaubert's own estimate of, 
 207, 208 ; his defence of the work, 
 against the criticism of M. Froehner, 
 208-216 ; mentioned, 16, 83, 98, 
 99, 122, 133, 229, 230, 272. 
 
 Sand, George, mentioned, 20, 32, 129, 
 137, 164, 230, 289; Madame 
 Colet's hatred of, 130; Flaubert's 
 letter to, anent his * Education 
 Sentimentale,'25i, 252; letter from 
 Flaubert to, on his loss in Bouilhet's 
 death, 254 ; Flaubert's correspond- 
 ence with during the years 1870-71, 
 255-268 ; letter from Flaubert on 
 death of Theophile Gautier, 281, 
 282 ; advises Flaubert to marry, 
 282 ; Flaubert's opinion of, 285 ; 
 Flaubert's last letters to, 285-2S8; 
 letter from Flaubert to, anent Levy 
 the publisher, 284 ; death of, 269. 
 
 Sassetti, Corsican servant of Flau- 
 bert's, loi, 102, 103, 108. 
 
 Schabarim, character in ' Salammbo,' 
 203, 204, 205, 206. 
 
 Schlesinger, Madame Maurice, letter 
 from Flaubert to, 199, 200. 
 
 Schools in France, 6, il. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, Flaubert on, 281. 
 
 Sentimental Education. See Educa- 
 tion Sentime ale. 
 
 ' Servante, La,' of Madame Colet, 
 
 (poem), 135; of Madame Colet, 
 (prose), 133, 135. 
 
 Shakespeare, Flaubert's opinion of 
 36, 62, 147, 148 ; mentioned, 12, 
 38, 99, 151, 234, 245, 296, 301, 
 302 ; Merry Wives of, 75. 
 
 Sheba, the Queen of, 86. 
 
 Simon, M. Jules, 285 . 
 
 Smar, 14, 15. 
 
 Socrates, 33. 
 
 ' Souvenirs Litteraires ' of Ducamp, 
 
 134- 
 Spencer, Herbert, Flaubert's opinion 
 
 of, 292. 
 Spendius, a character in ' Salammbu,' 
 
 203, 204, 205, 
 
 Sphinx, Flaubert at the, 104. 
 Spinoza, mentioned, 227. 
 Stevenson, R. L., 247. 
 'Story of a simple soul,' Flaubert's, 
 
 99, 271, 272, 289. 
 Study, Flaubert on method in, 67, 
 
 68. 
 Style, Flaubert's care about, 77. 
 
 Tanit, the Phoenician Venus, 203, 
 
 204, 207. 
 Tatianians, the, 87. 
 'Temptation of St. Anthony.' See 'St. 
 
 Anthony.' 
 
 Tennant, Mrs., her account of Flau- 
 bert, 9 ; Flaubert's letter to, on her 
 leaving Paris, 65, 66 ; visits Flau- 
 bert, 290. 
 
 TertuUian, introduced into Flaubert's 
 'St. Anthony,' 87. 
 
 Thackeray, 247 ; traces of revolt 
 against literary despotism in, 12. 
 
 'Thompson of Sunderland,' 115. 
 
 Topazus, the island of, 97. 
 
 Touche, character in ' Bouvard et 
 Pecuchet,' 332, 333, 340, 347. 
 
 Tourgenieff, intimacy of, with Flau- 
 bert, 270. 
 
 Tragelaphus, the, 97. 
 
 'Trois Contes,' of Flaubert, 271. 
 
 Trouville, a fishing village, 9.
 
 368 
 
 LIFE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 Valentinians, the, 87. 
 
 Valesians, the, 87. 
 
 Vancorbeil, Dr., characterin 'Bouvard 
 et Pecuchet,' 306, 307, 322. 
 
 Vaubyessard, the Marquis de, 163. 
 
 Victor and Victorine, children in 
 'Bouvard et Pecuchet,' 347-357. 
 
 Vigny, de, his work on ' Military Ser- 
 vitude and Greatness,' 66. 
 
 Villele, M. de, 297. 
 
 VillemessaJ editor of the Figaro^ 
 
 Virgil, mentioned, I2I, 296, 304, 
 Voltaire, Flaubert's opinion on the 
 
 prose of, 36 ; mentioned, 37, 56, 
 107, 108, 119, 231, 296. 
 ' Voltaire ' (newspaper), mentioned, 
 296. 
 
 Wordsworth, mentioned, 38, 127. 
 
 Yonville-l'Abbaye, the landscape 
 
 around, 165. 
 Yonville, agricultural show at, 176. 
 Yuk, the god of the grotesque, 15. 
 
 Zola, Emile, mentioned, 270, 298 ; 
 extract from letter of Flaubert's to, 
 288. 
 
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