_Flaubert_
Flaubert is a heavy-footed animal. It is plain that he is a Norman. All
his work has great specific gravity. He disgusts me. One of Flaubert's
master strokes was the conception of the character of Homais, the
apothecary, in _Madame Bovary_. I cannot see, however, that Homais
is any more stupid than Flaubert himself, and he may even be less so.
_The Giants_
The good Zola, vigorous, dull and perspiring, dubbed his contemporaries,
the French naturalistic novelists, "Giants." What an imagination was
possessed by Zola!
These "Giants" were none other than the Goncourts, whose insignificance
approached at times imbecility, and in addition, Alphonse Daudet, with
the air of a cheap comedian and an armful of mediocre books--a truly
French diet, feeble, but well seasoned. These poor Giants, of whom Zola
would talk, have become so weak and shrunken with time, that nobody is
able any longer to make them out, even as dwarfs.