Louis Hyacinthe Bouilhet was born at Can_Bouvard and Pécuchet: A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life, part 2

day of May, 1822. His father, chief of ambulances in the campaign of

1812, swam the Bérésina, carrying on his head the regiment's chest, and

died quite young from wounds received. His maternal grandfather, Pierre

Hourcastremé, dabbled in legislation, poetry, and geometry, received

congratulations from Voltaire, corresponded with Turgot and Condorcet,

spent nearly all his money buying shells, produced _Les Aventures de

Messire Anselme_, an _Essai sur la Faculté de Penser_, _Les Etrennes de

Mnémosyne_, etc., and after being a lawyer in Pau, a journalist in

Paris, administrator of the navy at Havre, and a schoolmaster at

Montvilliers, died almost a centenarian, bequeathing to his grandson the

memory of a strange but charming old man, who powdered his hair, wore

knee-breeches and cultivated tulips.

The child was sent to Ingouville, to a boarding-school on a high cliff,

and went to the college of Rouen at twelve, where he was usually at the

head of his class. He was not a model pupil, however; this term applies

to mediocre natures and a calmness of spirit which was rare in those

days.

I do not know what students admire nowadays, but our dreams were wildly

imaginative. The most enthusiastic dreamt of violent courtships, with

gondolas, and fainting ladies carried away in stagecoaches by masked

ruffians. Some, more gloomily disposed (admirers of Armand Carrel, a

countryman), preferred the clash of the press and the court-room, or the

glory of conspiracy. A rhetorician wrote an _Apologie de Robespierre_,

which reached a certain gentleman and so scandalised him that it brought

on an exchange of notes, followed by a challenge to a duel, in which the

said gentleman did not play a very creditable part. One good-natured

fellow always wore a red cap; another swore to live as a Mohican; one

of my intimate friends aspired to the honour of serving under

Abd-el-Kader. Apart from being troubadours, insurgents and Orientals, we

were, above all, artists. After studies, we wrote, and read novels till

late in the night. Bar ..., declaring he was tired of life, shot

himself; and And ... hanged himself with his cravat. We certainly

deserved little praise for our follies; but we hated platitudes; our

minds soared towards noble things. How we revered the masters! How we

admired Victor Hugo!

Among this group was Bouilhet, the elegist, the poet of moonlight and

ruins. When he was nearly twenty, this affectation disappeared, to give

place to a virulent democracy, so genuine that he was about to join a

secret society.

He received his bachelor's degree, and was told to choose a profession.

He chose medicine, settled his small income on his mother, and taught

for a living. His life became painfully labourious; he combined the

duties of poet, tutor and saw-bones. Two years later, he was appointed

interne at l'Hôtel Dieu in Rouen, under my father's orders. As he could

not attend during the day, his turn came oftener than others for night

watch. He did not mind it, however, as he had no other time in which to

write. All his poems of love, flowers and birds were written in those

winter nights, amidst the sick and suffering, or on Sundays in summer,

while the patients walked under his window. Those years of sadness were

not useless; the contemplation of suffering humanity, the dressing of

wounds, the dissecting-table, gave him a better knowledge of mankind.

Some would have given way under the strain, the disgust, the torture of

having to follow a vocation unsuited to him; but, thanks to his physical

and mental health, he stood it cheerfully. Some still remember meeting

in the streets of his native city, this handsome though somewhat timid

youth, with flowing blond hair, who always carried a note-book, in which

he wrote his verses as they came to him; sometimes while teaching, at a

friend's house, in a café, during an operation, anywhere. Poor in

worldly wealth, but rich in hope, he gave them away. He was a real poet

in the classical sense of the word.

When we met again after four years' separation, he read to me three of

his plays. The first, entitled _Le Déluge_, described a lover clinging

to his beloved, while he watched with anguish the ruins of the fast

disappearing world: "Hark to the crashing of the palm-trees on the

heights, and to the agonizing cries of Earth!" It was somewhat prolix,

and too emphatic, but was replete with force and passion. The second, a

satire against the Jesuits, was more resolute and in an entirely

different style: "Smile, priests of the boudoir and gather poor feminine

souls in your golden nets!" "Charming ministers in the confessional,

inflicting penance with love-words on their lips! Heroes of the Gospel,

impleading the Lord with flowery language, and treading each day, holy

martyrs! on soft carpets the _via crucis_!" "These merchants, at the

foot of the cross, casting lots and dividing, piece by piece, O Lord,

Thy robe and Thy cloak! These fakirs of holy relics, selling, oh,

wonder! Thy heart as amulets, and phials of Thy blood."

We must not forget the disturbances of the times, and must remember that

the author was only twenty-two. The play was dated 1844.

The third was an invective to "An author who sold his poems":

Why seek a famished passion to revive?

After thy rustic love through green fields strive

On flowery banks beside the rosy stream

Archangel, drink to drunkenness the sunny beam,

Under the willows chant etotic dreams,

Though Brutus' sins upon thy shoulders weigh

Doubtless thy simple soul and heart inveigh

Against the Destiny that took from thee.

"'Tis the greedy Plutus, with his purse full, who quotes smiling, human

honesty!"

"Destiny is the bag full of gold into which we plunge our greedy hands

with rapture! It is corruption which flaunts before our eyes its

alluring breast! It is fear, the silent spectre that disturbs the coward

in the hour of danger!"

"Your prudent Apollo, no doubt, passed through the stock exchange to

reach the Parnassus? We often see, in the political sky, the morning sun

die out before night. Look through your telescope, do you not see Guizot

waning and Thiers coming to light? Do you base your changeable faith and

your flexible probity on the mobility of the weather?"

"Avaunt! Greek, whose servile words lauded Xerxes the night before

Thermopylæ!" He continued in the same rough tone against the

administration. He sent his play to the _Reforme_, hoping they would

print it; but they refused peremptorily, not wishing to expose

themselves to a law suit--for mere literature.

It was near the end of 1845, when my father died, that Bouilhet gave up

the practice of medicine. But he continued to teach, and, with the aid

of a partner, obtained bachelorships for their pupils. The events of

1848 disturbed his republican faith. He now became a confirmed

_littérateur_, fond of metaphors and comparisons, but indifferent to all

else.

His thorough knowledge of Latin (he wrote as fluently in Latin as in

French) inspired the few Roman sketches, as in _Festons et Astragales_

and the poem _Meloenis_, published in the _Revue de Paris_, on the eve

of a political crisis. The moment was badly chosen. The public's fancy

and courage were considerably cooled, and it was not disposed, neither

were the powers, to accept independent genius; besides, individual style

always seems insurrectionary to governments and immoral to commoners.

The exaltation of vulgarism, the banishment of poetry, became more than

ever the rage. Wishing to show good judgment, they rushed headlong into

stupidity; anything above the ordinary bored them.

As a protest, he took refuge in forgotten places and in the far East;

and thence came the _Fossiles_ and different Chinese plays.

However, the provincial atmosphere stifled him; he needed a vaster

field; and severing his connections, he came to Paris; but at a certain

age one can no longer acquire the Parisian judgment; the things that

seem simple to a native of the boulevards, are impracticable to a man of

thirty-three arriving in the great city, having few acquaintances and no

income, and unaccustomed to solitude. Then his bad days began.

His first book, _Madame de Montarcy_, received on approval at the

Théâtre Français, and refused at the second reading, lingered for two

years and was only accepted at the Odéon in November, 1856. The first

performance was a rousing success. The applause often interrupted the

action of the play; a whiff of youth permeated the atmosphere; it was a

reminiscence of 1830. That night he became known; his success was

assured. He could have collaborated, and made money with his name; but

he preferred the quietness of Mantes, and went to live in a little house

near an old tower, at the turn of the bridge, where his friends visited

him on Sundays.

As soon as his plays were written, he took them to Paris; but the whims

and fancies of the managers, the critics, the belated appointments, and

the loss of time, caused him much weariness. He did not know that art,

in a question of art, held such a trifling place! When he joined a

committee against the unfair dealings at the Théâtre Français, he was

the only member that did not complain of the rates of authors'

royalties.

With what pleasure he returned to his daily distraction, the study of

Chinese! He pursued it ten years, merely as a study of the race,

intending to write a grand poem on the Celestial Empire. Days when his

heart was too full, he relieved himself by writing lyrical verses on the

restrictions of the stage. His luck had turned, but with the

_Conjuration d'Ambroise_ it returned, and it lasted all winter.

Six months later he was appointed conservator of the municipal library

of Rouen; and his old dream of leisure and fortune was realized at last!

But soon afterward a dullness seized him--the exhaustion from too long a

struggle. To counteract this he resumed the Greek tragic style and

rapidly composed his last play, _Mademoiselle Aïssé_, which he never

corrected. An incurable disease, long neglected, was the cause of his

death, which took place on the 18th of July, 1869. He passed away

without pain, in the presence of a friend of his youth and her child,

whom he loved as if he were his own son. Their affection had increased

towards the last, but two other persons marred their happiness. It seems

that in a poet's family there are always bitter disappointments.

Annoying quarrels, honeyed sarcasms, direct insults to art, the million

and one things that make your heart bleed,--nothing was spared him while

he lived, and these things followed him to his death-bed.

His fellow-countrymen flocked to his funeral as if he had been a public

man; even the less educated knowing full well that a superior intellect

had passed away. The whole Parisian press joined in this universal

sorrow; even the most hostile expressed their regrets; a Catholic writer

alone spoke disparagingly. No doubt the connoisseurs in verse deplore

the loss of such a poetical spirit; but those in whom he confided, who

knew his powerful spirit, who benefited by his advice, they alone know

to what height he might have risen.

He left, besides _Aïssé_, three comedies in prose, a fairy-scene, and

the first act of _Pélerinage de Saint-Jacques_, a drama in verse, in ten

tableaux. He had outlined two short poems: _Le Boeuf_, depicting the

rustic life of Latium; and _Le Dernier Banquet_, describing the Roman

patricians poisoning themselves at a banquet the night the soldiers of

Alaric are entering Rome. He wished also to write a novel on the heathen

of the fifth century, the counterpart of the _Martyrs_; but above all,

he desired to write his Chinese tale, the scenes of which are completely

laid out. It was his supreme ambition to recapitulate modern science, to

write the _De natura rerum_ of our age!

Who has the right to classify the talents of his contemporaries, and,

thinking himself superior to all, say: "This one comes first, that one

second, and this other third"? Fame's sudden changes are numerous. There

are irretrievable failures; some long, obscure periods, and some

triumphant reappearances. Was not Ronsard forgotten before Sainte-Beuve?

In days gone by, Saint-Amant was considered inferior as a poet to

Jacques Delille. _Don Quixote_, _Gil Blas_, _Manon Lescaut_, _La Cousine

Bette_ and other masterpieces, have never had the success of _Uncle

Tom_. In my youth, I heard comparisons made between Casimir Delavigne

and Victor Hugo, and it seems that "our great national poet" was

declining. Let us then be careful, or posterity will misjudge

us--perhaps laugh at our bitterness--still more, perhaps, at our

adulations; for the fame of an author does not spring from public

approbation, but from the verdict of a few intellects, who, in the

course of time, impose it upon the public.

Some will say that I have given my friend too high a place; but they

know not, no more do I, what place he will retain. Because his first

book is written in stanzas of six lines each, with triple rhymes, like

_Naouma_, and begins like this: "Of all the men that ever walked through

Rome, in Grecian buskins and linen toga, from Suburra to the Capitoline

hill, the handsomest was Paulus," somewhat similar to this: "Of all the

libertines in Paris, the first, oldest and most prolific in vice, where

debauchery is so easily found, the lewdest of all was Jacques Rolla,"

without more ado, and ignoring the dissimilarity of execution, poetry,

and nature, it was declared that the author of _Meloenis_ imitated

Alfred de Musset! He was condemned on the spot; a farce--it is so easy

to label a thing so as to be able to put it aside.

I do not wish to be unfair; but where has Musset, in any part of his

works, harmonized description, dialogue, and intrigue in more than two

thousand consecutive rhymes, with such results of composition, such

choice of language, in short, where is there a work of such magnitude?

What wonderful ability was needed to reproduce Roman society, without

affectation, yet keeping within the narrow confines of a dramatic fable!

If you look for the primitive idea, the general element in Louis

Bouilhet's poems, you will find a kind of naturalism that reminds you of

the Renaissance. His hatred of commonplace saved him from platitudes;

his inclination towards the heroic was tempered by his wit--he was very

witty. This part of his talent was almost unknown; he kept it somewhat

in the shadow, thinking it of no consequence; but now nothing hinders me

from acknowledging that he excelled in epigrams, sonnets, rondeaux and

other jests, written for distraction or pastime, and also through sheer

good-nature. I discovered some official speeches for functionaries,

New-Year verses for a little girl, some stanzas for a barber, for the

christening of a bell, for the visit of a king. He dedicated to one of

our friends, wounded in 1848, an ode on the patron of _The Taking of

Namur_, where emphasis reached the pinnacle of dullness. To another who

killed a viper with his whip he sent a piece entitled: _The struggle of

a monster and a genius_, which contained enough imperfect metaphors and

ridiculous periphrasis to serve as a model or as a scarecrow. But his

best was a masterpiece, in Béranger's style, entitled _The Nightcap!_

His intimate friends will always remember it. It praised glory, the

ladies, and philosophy so highly,--it was enough to make all the members

of the Caveau burst with the desire of emulating him.

He had the gift of being entertaining--a rare thing for a poet. Compare

his Chinese with his Roman plays, _Neera_ with _Lied Norman_, _Pastel_

with _Clair de Lune_, _Chronique de Printemps_ with _Sombre Eglogue_,

_Le Navire_ with _Une Soirée_, and you will see how productive and

ingenious he was.

He has dramatised all human passions; he has written about the mummies,

the triumphs of the unknown, the sadness of the stones, has unearthed

worlds, described barbaric peoples and biblical scenes, and written

lullabies. The scope of his imagination is sufficiently proven in _Les

Fossiles_, which Théophile Gautier called "the most difficult subject

ever attempted by any poet!" I may add that it is the only scientific

poem in all French literature that is really poetical. The stanzas at

the end, on the future man, show how well he understood the most

transcendent utopias. Among religious works, his _Colombe_ will perhaps

live as the declaration of faith of the nineteenth century. His

individuality manifests itself plainly in _Dernière Nuit_, _A Une

Femme_, _Quand vous m'avez quitté_, _Boudeuse_, etc., where he is by

turns dismal and ironical; whereas in _La fleur rouge_ it bursts out in

a singularly sharp and almost savage manner.

He does not look for effect; follows no school but his own individual

style, which is versatile, fluent, violent, full of imagination and

always musical. He possesses all the secrets of poetry; that is the

reason that his works abound with good lines, good all the way through,

as in _Le Lutrin_ and _Les Châtiments_. Take, for instance: "Is long

like a crocodile, with bird-like extremities." "A big, brown bear,

wearing a golden helmet." "He was a muleteer from Capua." "The sky was

as blue as a calm sea." "The thousand things one sees when mingling with

a crowd."

And this one of the Virgin Mary: "Forever pale from carrying her God."

In one sense of the word, he is classical. His _l'Oncle Million_ is

written in the most excellent French. "A poem! Make rhymes! It is

insanity! I have seen saner men put into a padded cell! Zounds! Who

speaks in rhymes? What a farce! Am I imaginative? Do I make verses? Do

you know, my boy, what I have had to endure to give you the extreme

pleasure of watching, lyre in hand, which way the winds blow? Wisely

considered, these frivolities are well enough at odd moments. I myself

knew a clerk that wrote verses."

Then further: "I say Léon is not even a poet! He a poet, come! You are

joking. Why, I saw him when he was no higher than that! What has he out

of the ordinary? He is a rattle-brained, stupid fool, and I warrant you

he will be a business man, or I will know the reason why!"

This style goes straight to the point. The meaning comes out so clearly

that the words are forgotten; that is, while clinging to it, they do not

impede or alter its purport.

But you will say these accomplishments are of no use for the stage; that

he was not a successful playwright. The sixty-eight performances of

_Montarcy_, ninety of _Hélène Peyron_, and five hundred of _La

Conjuration d'Ambroise_, prove the contrary. One must really know what

is suitable for the stage, and, above all things, acknowledge that the

dominant question is spontaneous and lucrative success. The most

experienced are at sea, not being able to follow the vagaries of public

taste. In olden times, one went to the theatre to hear beautiful

thoughts put into beautiful language. In 1830, furious and roaring

passion was the rage; later, such rapidity of action, that the heroes

had not time to speak; then, thesis; after that, witty sallies; and now

the reproduction of stupid vulgarism appears to monopolize the public

favour.

Bouilhet cared nothing for thesis; he hated insipid phrases, and

considered what is called "realism" a monstrosity. Stunning effects not

being acquired by mild colouring, he preferred bold descriptions,

violent situations--that is what made his poems really tragic. His plots

weakened sometimes towards the middle, but, for a play in verse, were it

more concise, it would crowd out all poetry. _La Conjuration d'Ambroise_

and _Mademoiselle Aïssé_ show some progress in this respect; but I am

not blind; I censure his Louis XIV. in _Madame de Montarcy_ as too

unreal; in _l'Oncle Million_ the feigned illness of the notary; in

_Hélène Peyron_ the too prolix scene in the fourth act, and in _Dolorès_

the lack of harmony between vagueness and precision. In short, his

personages are too poetical. He knew how to bring out sensational

effects, however. For instance, the reappearance of Marcelline at

Dubret's, the entrance cf Dom Pedro in the third act of _Dolorès_, the

Countess of Brissot in the dungeon, the commander in the last act of

_Aïssé_, and the ghostly reappearance of Cassius before the Empress

Faustine. This book was unjustly criticised; nor was the atticism

understood in _l'Oncle Million_, it being perhaps the best written of

all his plays, as _Faustine_ is the most labouriously contrived. They

are all very pathetic at the end, filled with exquisite things and real

passion. How well suited to the voice his poems are! How virile his

words, which make one shiver! Their impulsion resembles the flap of a

great bird's wings!

The heroic style of his dramas secured them an enthusiastic reception;

but his triumphs did not turn his head, as he knew that the best part of

a work is not always understood, and he might owe his success to the

weaker. If he had written the same plays in prose, perhaps his dramatic

talent would have been extolled; but, unfortunately, he used a medium

that is generally disliked. "No comedy in verse!" was the first cry, and

later, "No verses on the stage!" Why not confess that we desire none at

all?

He never wrote prose; rhymes were his natural dialect. He thought in

rhymes, and he loved them so that he read all sorts with equal

attention. When we love a thing we love every part of it. Play-goers

love the green-room; gourmands love to smell cooking; mothers love to

bathe their children. Disillusion is a sign of weakness. Beware of the

fastidious, for they are usually powerless!

Art, he thought, was a serious thing, its aim being to create a vague

exaltation; that alone being its morality. From a memorandum I take the

following notes:

"In poetry, one need not consider whether the morals are good, but

whether they adapt themselves to the person described; thus will it

describe with equal indifference good and bad actions, without

suggesting the latter as an example."--PIERRE CORNEILLE.

"Art, in its creations, must strive to please only those who have

the right to judge it; otherwise it will follow the wrong

path."--GOETHE.

"All the intellectual beauties and details of a tale (if it is well

written) are so many useful facts, and are perhaps more precious to

the public mind than the main points that make up the

subject."--BUFFON.

Therefore art, being its own motive, must not be considered an

expedient. No matter how much genius we might use in the development of

a story used as an example, another might prove the contrary. A climax

is not a conclusion. We must not infer generalities from one particular

case; those who think themselves progressive in doing so are working

against modern science, which demands that we gather all the facts

before proclaiming a law.

Bouilhet did not like that moralising art which teaches and corrects; he

liked still less the frivolous art, which strives to divert the mind or

stir the feelings; he did not follow democratic art, being convinced

that, to be accessible to all, it must descend to the lowest level; as,

at this civilised period, when we try to be artless we become silly. As

to official art, he refused all its advantages, not wishing to defend

causes that are so short-lived.

He avoided paradoxes, oddities, and all deviations; he followed a

straight road; that is, the generous feelings, the immutable side of the

human soul. As "thoughts are the foundation of language," he tried to

think well so as to write well. Although he wrote emotional dramas, he

never said: "If Margot wept, the melodrama is good," as he did not

believe in replacing emotion by trickery. He hated the new maxim that

says, "One must write as one speaks." It is true, the old way of

wasting time in making researches, the trouble taken when bringing out a

book, would seem ridiculous nowadays; we are above all those things, we

overflow with fluency and genius!

Not that he lacked genius, however; he often made corrections while a

rehearsal was in progress. Inspiration, he held, cannot be made, but

must come naturally. He followed Buffon's advice, expressing each

thought by an image, and made his conceptions as vivid as possible; but

the _bourgeois_ declared that "atmosphere" was too material a thing to

express sentiment; and fearing their sound French judgment might be

disturbed and carried beyond its limits, they exclaimed "too much

metaphor"!--as if they had any to spare!

Few authors take such pains in choosing their words, in phrasing. He did

not give the title of author to those who possess only certain elements

of style. Many of the most praised would have been unable to combine

analysis, description, and dialogue!

He loved rhythm, in verse as well as in prose. He considered that

language without rhythm was tedious, and unfit to stand the test of

being read aloud. He was very liberal; Shakespeare and Boileau were

equally admired by him; he read Rabelais continually, loved Corneille

and La Fontaine, and, although very romantic, he praised Voltaire. In

Greek literature, he preferred first of all the Odyssey, then

Aristophanes; in Latin, Tacitus and Juvenal. He had also studied

Apuleius a great deal.

He despised public speeches, whether addressed to God or to the people;

the bigot's style, as that of the labourer; all things that reek of the

sewer or of cheap perfume. Many things were unknown to him; such as the

fanaticism of the seventeenth century, the infatuation for Calvin, the

continuous lamentations on the decline of the arts. He cared little for

M. de Maistre, nor did Prudhon dazzle him. In his estimation, sober

minds were nothing else than inferior minds; he hated affected good

taste, thinking it more execrable than bad; and all discussions on the

arts, the gossip of the critics. He would rather have died than write a

preface. The following page, taken from a note-book and entitled _Notes

et Projets_, will give a better idea: "This century is essentially

pedagogic. There is no scribbler, no book, be they never so paltry, that

does not press itself upon the public; as to form, it is outlawed. If

you happen to write well, you are accused of lacking ideas. Heavens! One

must be stupid indeed to want for ideas at the price they bring! By

simply using these three words future, progress, society, no matter who

you are, you are a poet. How easy to encourage the fools and console the

envious! Mediocre, profitable poetry, school-room literature, æsthetic

prattle, economical refuse, scrofulous products of an exhausted nation,

oh! how I detest you all from the bottom of my heart! You are not

gangrene, you are putrescence!"

The day after his death Théophile Gautier wrote: "He carried with pride

the old tattered banner, which had seen so many battles; we can make a

shroud of it, the valiant followers of Hernani are no more." How true!

He devoted his entire life to ideals, loving literature for itself; as

the last fanatic loves a religion nearly or quite extinct.

"Second-rate genius," you will say; but fourth-rate ones are not so

plentiful now! We are getting wide of the mark. We are so engrossed in

stupidity and vulgarism that we shun delicacy and loftiness of mind; we

think it a bore to show respect to great men. Perhaps we shall lose,

with literary tradition, that ethereal element which represented life as

more sublime than it really is; but if we wish our works to live after

us, we must not sneer at fame. By cultivating the mind we acquire some

wit. Witnessing beautiful actions makes us more noble.

If there should be somewhere two young men who spend their Sundays

reading poetry together, telling each other what they have written and

what they would like to write, and, while indifferent to all else,

conceal this passion from all eyes--if so, my advice to them is this:

Go side by side, through the woods, reciting poetry; mingle your souls

with the sap of the trees and the eternity of God's creations; abandon

yourselves to reverie and the torpors of sublimity! Give up your youth

to the Muse; it will replace all other loves. When you have experienced

the world's miseries; when everything, including your own existence,

seems to point towards one purpose; when you are ready for any

sacrifice, any test,--then, publish your works. After that, no matter

what happens, you will look on the wretchedness of your rivals without

indignation, and on their success without envy. As the less favoured

will be consoled by the other's success, the one with a stouter heart

will encourage the weaker one; each will contribute his particular gift;

this mutual help will avert pride and delay declination.

When one of you dies--as we must all die--let the other treasure his

memory; let him use it as a bulwark against weakness, or, better, as a

private altar where he can open his heart and pour out his grief. Many

times, in the stillness of night, will he look vainly for his friend's

shadow, ready to question him: "Am I doing right? What must I do? Answer

me!"--and if this memory be a constant reminder of his sorrow, it will

at least be a companion in his solitude.

LETTER TO THE

MUNICIPALITY OF ROUEN

ON THE SUBJECT OF A MEMORIAL

LOUIS BOUILHET.

GENTLEMEN:--

[Illustration: B]By a majority of two votes--thirteen votes against

eleven (including that of the mayor and his six clerks)--you refused the

offer I made you to erect _free of cost_, at any place you might choose

in your city, a small fountain ornamented with the bust of Louis

Bouilhet.

As I am spokesman for the persons who contributed their money for this

purpose, I must protest in their name against this decision--that is, I

must reply to the objections uttered in your meeting of the 8th of

December last, an account of which appeared in the newspapers of Rouen

on the 18th of the same month.

The four principal objections were:

1.--That the subscription committee changed the destination of the

monument;

2.--That the municipal budget would be imperilled;

3.--That Bouilhet was not born in Rouen;

4.--That his literary talent is inadequate.

First objection (I use the words as they were printed): "Can the

committee modify the intention and substitute a fountain for a

tombstone? Will all the subscribers accept the substitution?"

We have modified nothing, gentlemen! the monument (a vague expression,

not precisely designating a tombstone) was suggested by M. Ernest Leroy,

ex-prefect of the "Seine-Inférieure," on the day of Bouilhet's funeral.

I immediately started a subscription, on which figured the names of an

imperial highness, George Sand, Alexandre Dumas, the great Russian

author Tourgeneff, Harrisse, a New York journalist, etc. Some

subscribers from the _Comédie Française_ are: Mmes. Plessy, Favart,

Brohan and M. Bressant; from the Opéra, M. Fauré and Mlle. Nilsson; in

short, after six months, we had about 14,000 francs at our disposal;

besides this, the marble was to be given to us by the _Beaux-Arts_

administration, and the sculptor chosen by us refused to accept any

remuneration.

Surely, all those people, known or unknown, did not give their time,

talent, or money, for the erection in a cemetery (which very few would

ever visit) of so costly a tombstone; one of those grotesque

constructions that are adverse to all religious feeling, to all

philosophies, whose derisive pride insults eternity!

No, gentlemen, what they desired was something less useful--and more

moral: that when passing Bouilhet's statue each one could say: "There

was a man who, in this avaricious century, devoted his whole life to the

worship of literature. This mark of respect is but justice to him, and I

have contributed my share to this reparation." This was their idea;

nothing else. Besides, how do you know? Who asked you to defend them?

The municipal council say: "As we understand it to be a tombstone, we

will give ten metres of ground and subscribe 500 francs." As this

decision implies a recrimination, let them keep their 500 francs! As to

the ground, we are willing to buy it. What is your price? But enough on

your first objection.

The second is dictated by excessive caution: "If the subscription

committee have made a mistake in their estimate, the city could not

leave it (the monument) unfinished; and we must even now foresee that,

if need be, we should have to make up the deficit."

Our estimate was submitted to your architect; as to our funds, if they

had been insufficient, rest assured the committee would have made an

appeal to the subscribers, or rather, would have supplied them out of

their own pockets. Thank heaven! we are rich enough to keep our word!

Your excessive anxiety seems somewhat rude.

Third objection: "Bouilhet was not born in Rouen!" Yet, M. Decorde says

in his report: "He is one of us"; and after the first performance of _La

Conjuration d'Ambroise_, M. Verdrel, ex-Mayor of Rouen, at a banquet

given in honor of Bouilhet, complimented him in the most flattering

terms; calling him "one of the geniuses of Rouen." For some years, it

was quite a fad of the smaller Parisian publications to ridicule the

enthusiasm of the people of Rouen for Bouilhet. In the _Charivari_, a

caricature represented the people of Rouen offering their respects to

_Hélène Peyron_ in the shape of bonbons and cakes; in another, I was

represented dragging the "Rouenese float."

But no matter. According to you, gentlemen, if an illustrious man is

born in a village consisting of thirty shanties, the monument must be

erected in that village, and not in the county seat? Then why not erect

it in the street, house, or even room where he was born? Suppose his

birthplace were unknown (history is not always decisive on this

point),--what would you do? Nothing. Am I right?

Fourth objection:--"His literary merit!"

I find in the report many big words on this subject: "Propriety";

"principles." "It must be risky." "It would be a great distinction; an

extreme honour; a supreme homage; which must be granted only with

extreme caution"; lastly, "Rouen is too large a pedestal for his

genius!" Really, such praise was not bestowed even upon the excellent M.

Pottier, "whose services to the city library were more conspicuous" (no

doubt, because it was your library). Nor, secondly, on Hyacinthe

Langlois! I knew him, gentlemen, better than all of you. Do not revive

this painful recollection! Never speak of this noble man! His life was a

disgrace to his countrymen! You call him "a great Norman celebrity,"

and, dispensing fame in fantastic manner, you quote among the

celebrities of which our city can boast (you can, but do not always)

Pierre Corneille! Corneille a celebrity? Really, you are severe! Then,

in the same breath, you mention Boieldieu, Lemonnier, Fontenelle, and,

gentlemen, you forget Gericault, the dean of modern painting;

Saint-Amant, the great poet; Boisgilbert, the first economist of France;

De La Salle, who discovered the mouth of the Mississippi; Louis Poterat,

inventor of porcelain in Europe,--and others!

That your predecessors should have forgotten to pay high, immoderate,

sufficient tribute, or even no tribute at all, to these "celebrities"

(Samuel Bochart, for instance, whose name adorns one of the streets of

Caen) is an indisputable fact! But does a previous injustice authorise

subsequent wrongs?

It is true, nothing has been erected to the memory of Rabelais,

Montaigne, Ronsard, Pascal, La Bruyère, Le Sage, Diderot, Vauvenargues,

Lamennais, Alexandre Dumas, and Balzac, in their native cities. On the

other hand, there is a statue of General de Saint-Pol at

Nogent-le-Rotrou; one of General Blanmont at Gisors; one of General

Leclerc at Pontoise; one of General Valhubert at Avranches; one of M.

Vaisse at Lyons; one of M. Billault at Nantes; one of M. de Morny at

Deauville; one of Ancelot at Havre; one of Ponsard at Valence; in a

public park at Vire, an enormous bust of Chênedollé; at Séez, in front

of the cathedral, a magnificent statue of Conté, etc.

This is all well enough, if the public purse has not suffered. Let those

who desire fame pay for it; let those who wish to pay tributes to

others, do so at their own cost. This is exactly what we wished to do.

So long as you were subject to no financial risks, your duty was to

demand of us a guaranty of execution. Besides the right to choose the

spot for our fountain, you had that of rejecting our sculptor and

choosing one yourselves. But you are too engrossed in the hypothetical

success of _Mademoiselle Aïssé_! "If this drama is not a success, might

not the erection of a public monument to his literary talent

[Bouilhet's] be looked upon with disfavour?"

M. Nion (who has special charge of the fine arts) thinks that if by

chance this drama should be a failure, the adoption of the proposed plan

would be "rashness" on the part of the municipal council. So, it would

seem that the bone of contention is the financial success of the piece!

If it is a success, Bouilhet is a great man; if a failure, he is not!

What a noble theory! The immediate success of a drama has nothing to do

with its literary value. There are numerous examples: Molière's

_L'Avare_ ran four nights; Racine's _Athalie_ and Rossini's _Barbier de

Seville_ were hooted. But rest easy, _Mademoiselle Aïssé_ was a great

success. It does not seem to matter to M. Decorde, your reporter, who

says: 'Bouilhet's talent is not proof against criticism'; and: 'His

reputation is not sufficiently established.' M. Nion says: 'His method

is more remarkable than his scenic conceptions! He is not original, not

a first-class author!' M. Decorde calls him 'an imitator of Alfred de

Musset, who was sometimes successful'! Really, my dear sir, you are not

as indulgent as you should be towards a contemporary,--you who, artfully

scoffing at this very city of Rouen, whose literary morals you defend so

well, have stigmatized Saint-Tard as 'a progressive borough.'[C] A nice

little place, where, "Despite the city toll, against which they grumble,

liquor-shops and cafés flourish."

[C] Read at a public meeting of the Academy of Rouen, Aug. 7th, 1867.

If you had been asked for money, I should have understood your

reluctance.

"Here is another thing; we are continually taxed for the least reason."

'Tis true the bourgeois of Saint-Tard are not much given to generosity!

We expected better of you after your treatment of modern slang in your

epistle _Des importations Anglaises_[D] in which are these lines: "I

read in a paper that at Boulogne-sur-Mer a fashionable cricket-club had

arranged a match. And having so poorly aped fashion, can lay claim to

admiration." Attractive lines, but these are better: "I have read

somewhere that a miser of Rennes, knowing no better way to avoid giving

presents, had died on the New Year."

[D] Read at the Academy of Rouen, at a public meeting, Aug. 7th, 1865.

(See analytical summary of the works of the Academy of Rouen.)

You are really versatile--whether you praise photograph collections: "It

is a pleasant pastime, and everyone has a large collection," or

Saint-Ouen Park: "Your fate is that of the great stream once so sought

after, and you in your turn are deserted."[E] Or dancing: "As everything

must follow the fashion, Terpsichore has submitted to the law of

exchange. Ignoring prohibition, the Lancers have already reached us from

Albion."[F] Or dinners in town: "You must not expect me to divulge what

the menu consists of; but from the beginning the dessert adorns the

table. Alas! those pleasures are not had for nothing; a winter in the

city is more costly than one thinks!"[G] Or the marvels of modern

industry: "And now, thanks to special trains, we can visit Belgium or

Switzerland in eight days, and at much less cost. And when De Lesseps

has at last made a passage through the Suez Canal, the tourist can take

a pleasure trip to India or the extreme Orient as easily as travelling

through France."[H]

[E] Letter of condolence to Saint-Ouen park.--Meeting of June 2, 1865.

(See analytical summary of the Academy of Rouen.)

[F] Winter in the city. (Letter.--Meeting of Aug. 6th, 1863.)

[G] Winter in the city. (Letter.--Meeting Aug. 6th, 1863.)

[H] Vacations. (Familiar letter.--Meeting of Aug. 6th, 1861.)

Do not stop, by any means! Write dramas even, you who have such a keen

conception of dramatic form! And rest assured, honourable sir, that if

your "reputation were sufficiently established," and although like Louis

Bouilhet's, your "talent" is not "proof against criticism," you are not

"original" not "a first-class author," you will never be called "an

imitator," even "sometimes successful," of Alfred de Musset!

Besides, your memory is at fault on this point. Did not one of your

colleagues of the Academy of Rouen, at the meeting of Aug. 7th, 1862,

praise Louis Bouilhet in flattering terms? He praised him so highly as a

dramatic author, and denied so energetically that he was an imitator of

Alfred de Musset, that when I wrote the preface to _Dernières Chansons_,

I simply copied the words of my old friend, Alfred Nion, brother of M.

Emile Nion, the gentleman that lacked boldness!

What was the gentleman "who has special charge of the fine arts" afraid

of? Of obstructing your public by-ways? Poets like this one (begging

your pardon) are not precisely innumerable. Since you have refused to

accept his statue, _notwithstanding_ our gift of a fountain, you have

lost one of your colleagues, M. Thubeuf. I do not wish to speak

unbecomingly, or to insult a sorrowful family I have not the honour of

knowing, but it seems to me that Nicholas-Louis-Juste Thubeuf is at the

present moment as forgotten as if he never had existed, while Bouilhet's

name is known over all Europe. _Aïssé_ is being played in St.

Petersburg and London. His plays and verses will be printed in six,

twenty, even a hundred years hence, and perhaps beyond that. A man is

seldom remembered unless he has been amusing or serviceable. You are not

able to be the former; grant us the latter. Instead of devoting your

time to literary criticism, a pastime that is beyond your powers, attend

to more serious things such as: the construction of a bridge; the

construction of a bonded-warehouse; the widening of the Rue du

Grand-Pont; the opening of a street, running from the Court-House to the

docks; the much delayed completion of the spire of the cathedral, etc.

Queer collection, indeed! It might be called "Museum of deferred

projects."

You are so afraid of compromising yourselves, so afraid to act, that

each outgoing administration hands its caution down to its successor.

You think caution such a virtue that it would be a crime for you to act.

Mediocrity is not detrimental, you think, but one must avoid being

enterprising. When the public clamours, a committee is at once

appointed; and from that time nothing is done. "We can do absolutely

nothing; we await the committee's decision." Invincible argument to

soothe public impatience!

Sometimes, however, you are bold enough to act; but it almost creates a

scandal: as when the ex-Rue de l'Impératrice, now the Rue Jeanne-Darc,

and the Square Solferino were opened in Rouen. Still: "Public parks are

the style now, and Rouen must have one!"[I]

[I] M. Decorde's poetry. (Letter of condolence to Saint-Ouen Park,

already cited.)

But the most important, though the most neglected, of all your projects

is the distribution of water throughout the city. Take Saint-Sever, for

example, where there is great need of it. What we proposed was, to

erect, at any street corner, a small fountain adorned with a statue.

Several of you had formally promised that our fountain should be

erected; we were therefore greatly surprised at your decision, inasmuch

as you are sometimes generous in these matters. The statue to Napoleon

I. on the Place Saint-Ouen is an instance. You gave, for the erection of

this masterpiece, which had cost 160,000 francs or thereabouts, the

small sum of 30,000 francs! The council had appropriated the first time

10,000 francs; the second time, 8,000; and the third time, 5,000, as

indemnity to the sculptor, because his _maquette_ had casually been

overthrown by the committee--always the committee! What aptitude for

art! For the statue of Pierre Corneille, proposed in 1805 and erected

twenty-nine years later, 1834, you spent 7,037.38 francs--not a cent

more. True, he was a great poet, and you are so considerate that you

prefer to deprive yourselves of a necessity, rather than honour a

second-rate poet!

Permit me to ask two questions: If this fountain, this useful public

monument which we offered, had represented anything but Louis Bouilhet's

bust, would you have refused it? If it had been intended for one of the

capitalists of our district, whose fortune runs into the millions, would

you have refused it? I doubt it.

Be careful, or you will be accused of despising those who cannot boast

of a fortune! For such cautious men, who consider success the main

object, you have sadly erred, gentlemen! The _Moniteur Universel_,

_l'Ordre_, the _Paris-Journal_, the _Bien Public_, the _XIXème Siècle_,

_l'Opinion Nationale_, the _Constitutionnel_, the _Gaulois_, the

_Figaro_, in fact, nearly all the papers, were against you. To convince

you, we will simply quote a few lines from the dean of modern critics,

Jules Janin:

"When the time came for definitive compensation, the last hope of Louis

Bouilhet's friends was dashed to the ground; they encountered all sorts

of obstacles. His statue was refused a place in a city that his fame had

made illustrious! His friends proposed in vain to erect a much needed

fountain, so that the statue ornamenting it might not be thought the

main object of this good deed. But how can unjust men understand the

cruelty of such a refusal? They might erect a statue to war, but to a

poet, never!"

Of the twenty-four composing the committee, eleven sided with us; and

Messrs. Vaucquier du Traversin, F. Deschamps and Raoul Duval spoke

eloquently in our favour. This affair is trifling in itself, but it may

be noted as a characteristic feature of the century--of your class.

"I address myself to you no longer, gentlemen, but to all the

_bourgeoisie_. Therefore I say: Conservators who conserve nothing, it is

time to follow a different path. You speak of decentralizing,

regenerating,--if so, rouse yourselves. Be active! Originate! French

nobles lost their prestige for having had, during two centuries, the

feelings of menials. The end of the _bourgeois_ is at hand, because

their feelings are those of the rabble. I do not see that they read

different papers, or hear different music, or that their pleasures are

more refined. In one as in the other, it is the same love of money; the

same wish to destroy idols; the same hatred of superior minds; the same

meanness; the same crass ignorance."

Of the seven hundred members of l'Assemblée Nationale, how many are

there who could name six kings of France, who know the first rudiments

of political economy, who have even read Bastiat? The whole municipality

of Rouen, who disowned a poet's talent, no doubt are ignorant of the

rules of versification. They do not need to know them, so long as they

do not meddle with poetry.

To be respected by those beneath us, we must respect those above us!

Before educating the rabble, educate yourselves! Enlightened people,

enlighten yourselves! Because of your disdain for superiority, you think

you have abundant good sense, you are positive, you are practical. One

is never really practical unless he carries it a little farther.... You

would not enjoy the benefits of industry if your ancestors of the

eighteenth century had had other ideals than common usefulness. How we

scoffed at Germany--at her dreamers, her ideologists, her ethereal

poets! Our milliards compensated her for the time well employed in

perfecting plans. It seems to me, it was the dreamer Fichte who

reorganized the Prussian army after Jena; and that the poet Koërner sent

a few Uhlans against us about 1813!

You practical? Come! You cannot even hold a pen or a gun! You let

convicts rob, imprison, and slaughter you! You have lost even the

brute's instinct of defence; and when not only your life, but your purse

(which ought to be dearer to you), is in danger, you lack the energy to

drop a ballot into a box! With all your capital, all your wisdom, you

never can form an association equal to _l'Internationale_! All your

intellectual efforts consist of trembling for the future. Think! Hasten!

or France, between a hideous demagogy and a stupid _bourgeoisie_, will

sink lower and lower!

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT.

SELECTED

CORRESPONDENCE

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

WITH AN

INTIMATE STUDY OF THE AUTHOR

CAROLINE COMMANVILLE

SIMON P. MAGEE

PUBLISHER

CHICAGO, ILL.

M. WALTER DUNNE

_Entered at Stationers' Hall, London_

INTIMATE REMEMBRANCES

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

[Illustration: T]These pages are not a biography of Gustave Flaubert,

they are simply recollections; my own and those I have collected.

My uncle's life was passed entirely in the intimacy of the family,

between his mother and me; to relate the story of this life is to make

him better known, more loved and esteemed; in this way I believe that I

am fulfilling a pious duty towards his memory.

Before Gustave Flaubert's birth, my grandparents had had three children.

The eldest, Achilles, was nine years older than Gustave, and the two

other little ones were dead. Then came Gustave and another boy who died

in a few months; and finally my mother, Caroline, the last child.

She and her younger brother loved each other with a peculiar tenderness.

With but three years difference in their ages, the two little ones were

scarcely ever separated from each other. Gustave repeated everything he

learned to his sister; she was his pupil, and one of his greatest

pleasures was initiating her into literary composition. Later, when he

was in Paris, it was to her he wrote; through her was the daily news

transmitted to their parents, because that sweet communion had not been

lost.

I should say that the greater part of the facts relative to my uncle's

infancy have been told me by the old nurse who brought him up and who

died three years after him, in 1883. The familiarity permitted with a

child was followed in her case by a respect and worship for her master.

She was "full of him," recalling his least action, his least word. When

she said "Monsieur Gustave," she believed that she was speaking of an

extraordinary being. Those who knew him will appreciate the verity

contained in the admiration of this old servant.

Gustave Flaubert was four years old when Julie came to Rouen into my

grand-parents' service, in 1825. She came from the village of

Fleury-on-the-Andelle, situated in that pretty, smiling valley which

extends from Pont-Saint-Pierre to the great market-town of

Lyons-la-Forêt. The coast of the "Two Lovers" protected its entrance;

here and there was a château, sometimes surrounded by water and having

its drawbridge, again the superb estate of Radepont, the ruins of an old

abbey and the woods of the surrounding hills.

This charming country is fertile in old stories of love and of ghosts.

Julie knew them all. She was a skilful story-teller, this simple girl of

the people, and endowed with a naturally fine and agreeable mind. Her

ancestors, from father to son, had been postilions, rather bad fellows,

and hard drinkers.

While Gustave was small he would sit beside her for whole days. In order

to amuse him, Julie would join together all the legends she had heard

around the fire with those she had read, and, having been kept in bed a

year with a bad knee, she had read more than most women of her class.

The child was of a tranquil nature, meditative, possessing an

ingenuousness of which he retained traces during his whole life. My

grandmother has told me that he would remain for hours with a finger in

his mouth, absorbed, and with an almost stupid appearance. When he was

six years old an old domestic, called Pierre, used to amuse himself with

that innocence; he would say to little Gustave, if he teased for

anything, "Go now and look at the end of the garden, or in the kitchen

and see whether I am there." And the child would go and say to the cook:

"Pierre sent me to see whether he were here." He could not comprehend

that they were deceiving him, and while they laughed, would stand

thinking, trying to see through the mystery.

My grandmother had taught her oldest son to read, and, wishing to do as

much for the second, put herself to the task. The little Caroline,

beside Gustave, learned by degrees that she could not keep up with him,

and he, being forced to understand this from signs of which no one said

anything to him, began to weep large tears. He was, however, eager for

knowledge, and his brain worked continually.

Opposite the hospital, in a modest little house in the Rue de Lecat,

lived two old people, Father and Mother Mignot. They had an extreme

tenderness for their little neighbour. Times without number, the child

would open the heavy door of the Hôtel-Dieu, and run across to Father

Mignot's knee, upon a signal from him. And it was not the good woman's

strawberries that tempted him, but the stories the old man told him. He

knew a great many pretty tales of one kind and another, and with what

patience he related them! From this time Julie was supplanted. The child

was not difficult to please, but had insistent preferences; those that

he liked must be told him over and over again.

Father Mignot also read to him. _Don Quixote_ especially pleased my

uncle; he would never let it be taken from him. And he retained for

Cervantes the same admiration all his life.

In the scenes brought about by the difficulty of learning to read, the

last irrefutable argument with him was: "Why should I learn, since Papa

Mignot can read to me?"

But the age for entering school arrived. He must know once for all that

his old friend could not follow him there. Gustave put himself

resolutely to work, and at the end of a few months had caught up with

the children of his age. He entered the eighth class.

He was not what one would call a brilliant pupil. Continually failing to

observe some rule, and not troubling himself to understand his

professors, punishments abounded, and the first prize escaped him,

except in history, in which he was always first. In philosophy he

distinguished himself, but he never comprehended mathematics.

Generous and full of exuberance, he had some warm friends whom he amused

extremely by his unquenchable enthusiasm and good humour. His melancholy

times, for he had them even then, he passed in a region of his mind

accessible to himself alone, and not yet did he show them in his

exterior life. He had a great memory, forgetting nothing, neither

benevolences nor vexation of which he was the subject. Thus, he

preserved for his professor in history, Cheruel, a profound remembrance,

and hated a certain usher who had hindered him from reading his

favourite book during the study hour.

But his years at the college were miserable; he never could become

accustomed to things there, having a horror of discipline, and of

everything that savoured of militarism. The custom of announcing the

change of exercises by the beating of drums irritated him, and that of

filing the pupils in rank when they passed from one class to another

exasperated him. Constraint in his movements was a punishment, and his

walk with the procession every Thursday was never a pleasure; not that

he was feeble, but he had a natural antipathy for all that seemed to him

useless motion. His antipathy for walking lasted his whole life. Of all

exercises for the body, swimming alone pleased him; he was a very good

swimmer.

The dull, labourious days of school life were enlivened by outings on

Thursdays and Sundays. Then he saw his beloved family and his little

sister, which was a joy unequalled.

In the dormitory during the week, thanks to some hidden pieces of

candle, he read some of Victor Hugo's dramas, and his passion for the

theatre was kept warm. From the age of ten, Gustave composed tragedies.

These pieces, of which he was scarcely able to write the lines, were

played by him and his comrades. A great billiard hall opening from the

salon was given up to them. The billiard table, pushed to one end of

the room, served as a stage, which they mounted by means of a crock from

the garden. Caroline had charge of the decorations and costumes. His

mother's wardrobe was plundered for old shawls, which made excellent

peplums. He wrote to one of his principal actors, Ernest Chevalier:

"Victory! victory! victory! victory! You will come, and Amédée, Edmond,

Madame Chevalier, Mamma, two servants and perhaps some pupils, will be

here to see us play. We shall give four pieces that you do not know. But

you will soon learn them. The tickets of the first, second, and third

classes are made. There will be some armchairs. There will also be

scenery and decorations; the curtain is arranged. Perhaps there will be

ten or twelve persons. So we must have courage and not fear," etc.

Alfred Le Poittevin, some years older than Gustave, and his sister

Laura, were also a part of these representations. The family of

Poittevin was bound to that of Flaubert through the two mothers, who had

known each other from nine years of age at the _pension_. Alfred Le

Poittevin had a very great influence upon my uncle in his youth,

contributing to his literary development. He was endowed with a

brilliant mind, full of life and eccentricity. He died young, which was

a great grief. My uncle speaks of him in his preface to the _Last

Songs_.

* * * * *

A few words about my grandparents and upon the moral and intellectual

development of my uncle.

My grandfather, whose traits have been sketched in _Madame Bovary_,

under those of Doctor Larivière, called in consultation to the bed of

the dying Emma, was the son of a veterinary of Nogent-on-the-Seine. The

situation of the family was modest: nevertheless, by denying themselves,

they sent their son to Paris to study medicine. He took the first prize

in the great competition and by this success was received as a doctor

free of further cost. Scarcely had he passed his examinations when he

was sent from Dupuytren, where he was house physician, to Rouen to

Doctor Laumonier, who was then surgeon of the hospital. This sojourn was

supposed to be only temporary, to restore his health, which had become

enfeebled from overwork and a life of privation. But, instead of

remaining for a few months, the young physician spent all his life

there. The frequent appeals of his numerous friends, or the hope of

arriving at a high place in the medical profession in Paris, which his

successful beginning had justified, never decided him to leave his

hospital and a people to whom he became profoundly attached.

But in the beginning, it was love which extended this sojourn,--love for

a young girl, a child of thirteen years, a goddaughter of Madame

Laumonier, an orphan in a boarding-school, who came each week to visit

her godmother.

Anne-Justine-Caroline Fleuriot was born in 1794 at Pont-l'Evêque in

Calvados. Through her mother she was allied to the oldest families in

Lower Normandy. "A great noise is made," said Charlotte Corday in one of

her letters, "about an unequal marriage between Charlotte Cambremer de

Croixmare and Jean-Baptiste Francois-Prosper Fleuriot, a doctor without

reputation." At thirty years of age Mademoiselle de Croixmare had been

sent back to the convent. But the obstacles were finally conquered, the

walls of the convent broken and the marriage took place. One year later

a daughter was born, and the mother died in giving her birth.

The child, left in the arms of its father, became for him an object of

tenderness and worship. At sixteen, my grandmother still remembered with

emotion her father's kisses. "He would undress me each evening," she

said, "and put me in my bed, wishing to take my mother's place." These

paternal cares soon ceased. Doctor Fleuriot, seeing that he was about to

die, gave his daughter in charge of two old ladies of Saint-Cyr who had

a little school at Honfleur. These ladies promised to keep her until her

marriage, but they, too, soon disappeared. Then her tutor, Monsieur

Thouret, sent the young girl to Madame Laumonier, sister of

Jacques-Guillaume Thouret, Deputy from Rouen to the States-General and

President of that Assembly. She came at the same time as my grandfather,

when they happened to see each other. Some months later they avowed

their love and promised themselves to each another.

The Laumonier household, like many others of that epoch, tolerated,

under a spiritual and gracious exterior, a certain lightness of morals.

The eminently serious nature of my grandmother and her love preserved

her from the dangers of such surroundings. Besides, my grandfather, more

far-seeing than she could be, wished her to remain in the

boarding-school until she was married. She was eighteen and he

twenty-seven at the time of their marriage. Their purse was slender, but

their hearts had little fear. My grandfather's portion was in his

future; my grandmother had a little farm which brought her a revenue of

four thousand francs.

The household was established in the Rue du Petit-Salut, near the Rue

Grand-Pont, a little street of narrow houses, touching one another,

where the sun could never penetrate. In my childhood my grandmother

would often take me through there, and, looking at the windows, would

say in a grave voice, almost religious: "Look, my child, the best years

of my life were passed there."

Descended from a Champenois and a Norman, Gustave Flaubert had the

characteristic signs of both races; his temperament was very expansive

and, at the same time, it was enveloped in the vague melancholy of the

people of the north. He was of even temper and gay, sometimes with a

touch of buffoonery; but ever at the bottom of his nature was an

undefined sadness, a kind of disquiet. He was physically robust,

enjoying full, strong pleasures; but his soul, aspiring to an

unattainable ideal, suffered without ceasing in not finding it. This

applied to the smallest things; because, as a seeker after the

exquisite, he had found that the most frequently recurring sentiment was

nearly always one of grief. This without doubt added to the sensibility

of his nervous system, which the violent commotions of a certain malady

(to the paroxysms of which he had had many relapses, especially in his

youth) had refined to an extreme point. That came also from his great

love of the ideal. This nervous malady threw a veil over his whole life;

it was a permanent fear obscuring even his happiest days. However, it

had no influence upon his robust health, and the incessant and vigorous

work of his brain continued without interruption.

Gustave Flaubert was something of a fanatic; he had taken art for his

god, and like a devotee, he knew all the tortures and all the

intoxications of the love to which he had sacrificed himself. After

hours passed in communion with abstract form, the mystic became man

again, was a _bon vivant_, laughed with a frank laugh, put a charming

gaiety into the recital of a story, or some pleasant personal

remembrance. One of his greatest pleasures was to amuse those about him.

What would he not do to raise my spirits when I was sad or ill?

It was easy to feel the honesty of his characteristics. From his father

he had received his tendency to experiment, that minute observation of

things which caused him to spend infinite time in accounting to himself

for the smallest detail, and that taste for all knowledge which made him

a scholar as well as an artist. His mother transmitted to him his

impressionability and that almost feminine tenderness which often made

his great heart overflow and his eyes grow moist at the sight of a

child. His taste for travel, he often said, came to him from one of his

ancestors who took part in the conquest of Canada. He was very proud of

counting up the brave ones among his own people, any one who had brains

and was not _bourgeois_; for he had a hatred of the _bourgeois_, and

continually employed that term as a synonym for mediocrity and envy, the

living only with the appearance of virtue and insulting all grandeur and

beauty.

At the death of Laumonier, my grandfather succeeded him as

surgeon-in-chief of the Hospital. It was in this vast building that

Gustave Flaubert was born.

The Hospital at Rouen, of the construction of the last century, is not

wanting in a certain kind of character; the straight lines of its

architecture present something of chasteness and something of the

accepted modern types. It was situated at the end of Rue de Crosne, and

as one came from the centre of the town he found himself face to face

with the great arch of the iron gate, all black, behind which was a

court-yard with willows planted in rows: at the end and built around the

sides was the edifice.

The part occupied by my grandparents formed a wing, approached by a

private entrance. At the left of the central gate, a high door opened

upon a court where grass grew among the old paving stones. On the other

side of the pavilion was a garden forming an angle with the street,

bordered at the left by a wall covered with ivy and hemmed in at the

right by the hospital buildings. These are high grey walls, punctured

with little glazed holes to which meagre faces are glued, their heads

bound in white linen cloths. These ghastly silhouettes with hollow eyes

show great suffering and have a profound sadness about them.

Gustave's room was on the side of the entrance, in the second story. The

view was upon the hospital gardens overlooking the trees, under whose

verdure the patients sat on stone seats, when the weather was pleasant.

From time to time the white wing of a great bonnet of one of the sisters

could be seen rapidly crossing the courtyard, and sometimes there were

visitors, the parents of the invalids, or the friends of the attendants,

but never any noise or anything unexpected.

This severe and melancholy place could not have been without influence

upon Gustave Flaubert. He ever retained an exquisite compassion for all

human suffering, and also a high morality, which would scarcely be

suspected by those who are scandalised by his paradoxes.

No one was less like what is usually called an artist than my uncle.

Among the peculiarities of his character, the contrasts have always

astonished me. This man, so preoccupied with beauty in style and giving

form so high a place, even the highest, paid little attention to the

beauty that surrounded him; his own furniture was of heavy contour, not

the least delicate, and he had no taste for objects of art (bric-à-brac)

so much in vogue at that time.

He loved order with a passion, carrying it to a mania, and would never

work until his books were arranged in a certain fashion. He preserved

carefully all letters addressed to him. I have large boxes full of them.

Did he think there would be as much interest taken in them as there was

later in his own? Did he foresee that great interest in his

correspondence (which reveals the man in a light so different from that

revealed by his works), that he imposed upon me the task of collecting

and publishing it? No one can say.

He always observed extreme regularity in his work each day. He yoked

himself to it as an ox is yoked to a cart, without waiting for that

inspiration which expectation renders fruitless, as he said. His energy

of will for all that concerned his art was prodigious, and his patience

was tireless. Some years before his death, he would amuse himself by

saying: "I am the last of the Fathers of the Church," and, in fact, with

his long, maroon-coloured wrapper and a little black silk cap on the top

of his head, he was something like a recluse of Port-Royal.

I can see him now running over the terrace at Croisset, absorbed in

thought, stopping suddenly, his arms crossed, raising his head and

remaining for some moments with his eyes fixed on the space above, and

then resuming his walk again.

Life at the Hospital was regular, free, and good. My grandfather, who

had attained a high reputation, medically, gave his children all that

ease and tenderness could add to the happiness of youth. He had bought a

house in the country, at Deville near Rouen, which he disposed of one

year before his death, a railroad having cut through the garden only a

few metres from the house. It was then that he bought Croisset, on the

banks of the Seine.

Each year the entire family went to Nogent-on-the-Seine to the home of

the Flaubert parents. It was quite a journey, which we made in a

post-chaise, a veritable journey of the good old times. The thought of

them brought many an amusing remembrance to my uncle; but those which

were most charming to him were his vacations passed at Trouville, then

but a simple fishing village.

He met there some English people, the family of Admiral Collier, all of

whom were beautiful and intelligent. The oldest daughters, Gertrude and

Henrietta, soon became the intimate friends of my uncle and my mother.

Gertrude, now Madame Tennant, lately wrote me some pages about her

youth. I translate the following lines:--

"Gustave Flaubert was then like a young Greek. In full adolescence,

he was tall and thin, supple and graceful as an athlete,

unconscious of the gifts that he possessed, physically and morally,

caring little for the impression he produced and entirely

indifferent to accepted form. His dress consisted of a red flannel

shirt, great trousers of blue cloth, a scarf of the same color

around his waist and a cap put on no matter how, or often

bare-headed. When I spoke to him of fame, or of influence, as

desirable things that I esteemed, he listened, smiled, and seemed

superbly indifferent. He admired what was beautiful in nature, art

and literature and lived for that, as he said, without any thought

of the personal. He cared neither for glory nor for gain. Was it

not enough that a thing was true and beautiful? His great joy was

in finding 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 was its intense individuality. He hated all

hypocrisy. What was lacking in his nature, was an interest in

exterior and useful things. If any one happened to say that

religion, politics, or business had as great an interest for them

as literature or art, he would open his eyes in astonishment and

pity. To be literary, an artist, that alone was worth living for."

It was at Trouville also that he met the musical editor, Maurice

Schlesinger and his wife. Many faces remained engraved on his memory of

his sojourns by the sea, among others that of an old sailor, Captain

Barbet and his little daughter, Barbette, a little humpback always

crying out to her dolls. Then there was Doctor Billard, and Father

Couillère, mayor of the commune, at whose house they had repasts that

lasted for six hours. He recalled these years in writing _A Simple

Soul_. Madame Aubin, her two children, the house where she lived, and

all the details so true, so appreciative, in this simple history, are of

striking exactness. Madame was an aunt to my grandmother; Félicité and

her parrot once lived.

In his last years, my uncle had an extreme desire to revive his youth.

He wrote _A Simple Soul_, after his mother's death, to try to accomplish

this. In painting the town where she was born, the hearth before which

she had played, his cousins, the companions of his childhood, he found

satisfaction, and that pleasure has brought from his pen his most

touching pages, those perhaps where he allows us to divine most clearly

the man under the writer. Recall that scene where Madame Aubin and her

servant are arranging the trifling possessions that had belonged to

Virginia. A large hat of black straw which my grandmother had worn awoke

in my uncle a similar emotion. He would take that relic from the nail,

look at it in silence, with eyes moistening, and then respectfully

replace it.

Finally, the happy time of leaving college arrived, but the terrible

question of choosing a profession, or taking up some career poisoned his

joy. As a vocation, he cared only for literature, and "literature" is

not a career; it leads to no "position." My grandfather wished his son

to be a savant and a law practitioner. To devote himself to the unique

and exclusive research for beauty of literary form, seemed to him almost

folly. A man of character, eminently strong, and of very active habits,

he comprehended with difficulty the nervous and somewhat feminine side

which characterises all artistic organisations. With his mother my uncle

found more encouragement, but she held to the point that he should obey

his father, and he was resolved that Gustave should make his way in

Paris. He set out, sad at leaving his own people, his sister especially.

At Paris he lived in the Rue de l'Est in a little bachelor apartment

where he found himself badly installed. The noisy, free and easy

pleasures of his comrades seemed to him stupid, so that he scarcely ever

participated in them. He would remain alone, open one of his law books,

which he would immediately put away, then extending himself upon his

bed, he would smoke and dream for hours. He became very weary of this

life, and grew sombre.

Pradier's studio alone put warmth in him again; he saw there all the

artists of the day, and in contact with them he felt his instincts grow.

One day he met Victor Hugo there. Some women visited the studio; it was

there he met Louise Colet. He often went to see the pretty English girls

of Trouville, to the salon of the editor, Maurice Schlesinger, and to

the hospitable house of his father's friend, Doctor Jules Cloquet, who

led him away one summer to the Pyrenees and to Corsica. The _Education

Sentimental_ was composed in remembrance of this epoch.

But in spite of friendship,--doubtless in spite of love,--a weariness

without bounds invaded him. His work, which was contrary to his taste,

became intolerable to him, his health was seriously affected and he

returned to Rouen.

My mother's marriage, her death the year following, and a little later

that of my grandfather, left my grandmother in such grief that she was

happy to keep her son near her. Paris and the Law School were abandoned.

It was then that, in company with Maxime Ducamp, he made the journey

through Brittany and they wrote together the book: _Over Strand and

Field_. (_A travers les Champs et les Grèves._)

Upon his return, he began his _Saint Antoine_, his first great work. It

had been preceded by many, of which fragments have been published since

his death. The _Saint Antoine_ composed then, was not the first known to

the public. This work was undertaken at three different times before it

was finally finished.

In 1849 Gustave Flaubert took a second journey with Maxime Ducamp. This

time the two friends directed their steps towards the Orient, which had

for so long been their dream!

II.

My personal reminiscences date from his return. He came back at evening;

I was in bed, but they awakened me. He came to my little bed, raised me

suddenly and found me very droll in my long nightgown; I remember that

it extended far below my feet. He began to laugh very hard and then to

imprint great kisses on my cheeks which made me cry; I felt the cold of

his moustache, humid with dew, and was very glad when he put me down

again. I was then five years old and we were at the grandparents' house

at Nogent. Three months later I saw him again in England, as I still

remember distinctly. It was at the time of the first Exposition at

London. They took me there and the crowd frightened me; my uncle took me

on his shoulder, and I traversed the galleries overlooking everybody,

this time happy to be in his arms. They chose me a governess and we

returned to Croisset.

My uncle wished to begin my education immediately. The governess was to

teach me only English; my grandmother would teach me to read and write,

and for him was reserved history and geography. He believed it useless

to study grammar, holding that it taught itself in reading, and that it

was bad to charge the memory of a young child with abstractions, which

one begins where often they ought to finish.

Then began some years when we were all together.

Croisset, where we lived, is the first village on the bank of the Seine

in going from Rouen to Havre. The house, long and low in shape, all

white, must have been built about two hundred years. It had belonged to

the monks of the Abbey of Saint-Ouen whom it served for a country house,

and it pleased my uncle to think that Prévost had composed _Manon

Lescaut_ here.

In the interior court, where still remained the pointed roof and the

guillotine-shaped windows of the seventeenth century, the construction

was interesting, but the façade was ugly. It had undergone one of those

remodellings in bad taste that were seen so often in the first Empire

and the reign of Louis Philippe, at the beginning of the century. Above

the entrance, after the fashion of bas-reliefs, were some villainous

casts,--the seasons of Bouchardon--and the mantelpiece in the salon had

on each side a representation of a mummy in white marble, a souvenir of

the Egyptian country.

The rooms were few, but sufficiently large. The spacious dining-room,

which occupied the centre of the house on the ground floor, opened upon

the garden by a glass door flanked by two windows in full view of the

river. It was pleasing and gay.

On the next story, at the right, a long corridor separated the chambers,

and on the left was my uncle's study, or work-room. It was a large

apartment, with a very low ceiling, but very light, because of five

windows, of which three looked upon the whole length of the garden, the

other two being in the front of the house. There was a pretty view of

the turf, the beds full of flowers, the trees on the long terrace, and

the Seine enframed in the foliage of a splendid tulip tree.

The ways of the house were subordinated to the taste of my uncle, my

grandmother having, so to speak, no longer any personal life; she lived

for the happiness of others. Her tenderness was in alarm at the

slightest symptom of suffering which she thought she detected in her

son, and she sought to envelop him in a calm atmosphere. In the morning

she was on the defence against the least noise; towards ten o'clock the

violent ringing of a bell would be heard, and some one would go to my

uncle's room; not until then did every one awake. The domestic carried

him his letters and newspapers, deposited on the night table a glass of

fresh water and a well-filled pipe; then he opened the shutters, and the

light streamed in. My uncle would seize his letters, run over the

addresses, but rarely did he open one before taking a few whiffs from

his pipe; then, having read them all, he would tap the neighbouring wall

to call his mother, who would run in immediately and seat herself near

his bed until he was ready to rise.

He made his toilet slowly, sometimes interrupting himself to go to the

table and re-read some passage with which he was preoccupied. Although

little complicated, his dress was not lacking in care, and his neatness

expressed his refinement.

At eleven he came down to breakfast, where my grandmother, uncle Parain,

the governess and I, were already assembled. We all loved uncle Parain

infinitely. He had married my grandfather's sister and passed a great

part of the year with us. At this time my uncle ate little, especially

in the morning, finding that too much nourishment made him heavy and

unfit for work. Almost never did he eat meat; only eggs, vegetables, a

piece of cheese, fruit and a cup of cold chocolate. At dessert, he would

relight his pipe--a little gray pipe--get up and go into the garden,

where we followed. His favourite walk was the terrace walled in and

bordered on one side by old willows cut straight across like a gigantic

wall. This led to a little pavilion in the style of Louis XV., whose

windows looked out upon the Seine. Very often on summer evenings we

would all seat ourselves here under the balcony of graceful fretwork and

remain for some calm hours, chatting together; the night would come,

little by little, the last passers disappear; in the water opposite we

could just distinguish the silhouette of a horse drawing a boat which

glided along without noise; then the moon would begin to shine with a

thousand sparkling rays, like a fine diamond powder, scintillating at

our feet, while a light tug and two or three barques would slip from

their moorings and invade the river. These belonged to the eel fishers

who were starting at this time to set their nets.

My grandmother, who was very delicate, would cough, and my uncle would

say: "It is time to return to the Bovary." The Bovary? What was that? I

knew not. But I respected the name, those two words, as I respected

everything that came from my uncle, and believed vaguely that it was a

synonym for work, and work was writing, as was well understood. In fact,

it was during these years, from 1852 to 1856 that he composed this

novel.

We were rarely in the pavilion after breakfast. Fleeing from the midday

sun, we mounted to a spot called "The Mercury," because of a statue of

that god which formerly ornamented it. It was a second avenue situated

above the terrace, which led to a charming shady footpath; some old

yew-trees came out of the rocks in queer shapes, showing their bare

roots and jagged trunks; they appeared to be suspended, holding only to

the crumbling wall at the side by their roots. Above the alley was a

kind of roundpoint, a circular bench concealed under some huge

chestnut-trees. Through the branches one could see the tranquil waters

and above them a large expanse of sky.

From time to time, a cloud would rapidly go by and vanish. It was the

smoke of a steamboat; and immediately would appear between the

interlaced branches the pointed masts of ships which were being towed to

Rouen. Sometimes there would be seven, or nine. Nothing is more majestic

and beautiful than the pomp of these floating houses, which suggest a

far-off country. About one o'clock could be heard a sharp whistle; it

was "the steamer," as they say in the country. Three times a day this

boat crossed between Rouen and Bouille. The whistle was the signal of

departure.

"Come," my uncle would say, "come to your lesson, my Caro;" and dragging

me along, we would both go into his large study, where the shutters were

carefully closed to keep out the heat. It was pleasant there; one

breathed an odour of Oriental joss-sticks mingled with that of tobacco,

also with perfumes that were wafted in through the door of his

dressing-room. With a bound I would throw myself upon the great white

bear-skin, which I adored, and cover his great head with kisses. My

uncle, meantime, would be putting his pipe on the chimney-piece; and,

selecting another, would fill it, light it, and seat himself in his

leather armchair at the end of the room; he would cross one leg over the

other, turn his back, take a file and begin to polish his nails, saying:

"Let us see, where were you? Now, what do you remember from yesterday?"

"Oh! I know the history of Pelopidas and Epaminondas very well."

"Relate it, then."

I began, but naturally I became confused or I had forgotten.

"I am going to tell it to you once more," he would finally say.

Then I would approach and sit facing him on a long chair or upon the

divan. I listened with a palpitating interest to the recitals that he

made so amusing to me.

It was thus I learned all my ancient history, coming to the facts one

after another, making reflections within my power, but remaining truly

and profoundly observant; mature minds would have been able to listen

without finding anything puerile in his teaching.

Sometimes I would stop him and ask: "Was he good?" And this question,

applied to such men as Cambyses, Alexander or Alcibiades, was somewhat

embarrassing for him to answer.

"Good?" he would say, "Yes ... these were not very proper gentlemen, but

... that is not the point."

But I was not satisfied, and I found that "my old boy," as I called him,

knew even the smallest details of the people we were studying about.

The history lesson finished, we passed on to geography. He never wished

me to study from a book. "Images, as many as possible," he said, "are

the best means of learning in childhood." We had charts, spheres, games

of patience which we could make and unmake together; then, to explain

the difference between islands, peninsulas, bays, gulfs and promontories

he would take a shovel and a pail of water and, in a little walk in the

garden, make models of these in nature.

As I grew older, the lessons became longer and more serious. He

continued them up to my seventeenth year, until my marriage. When I was

ten years old, he obliged me to take notes while he was speaking, and

when my mind was capable of comprehending it, he began to make me notice

the artistic side of things, especially in my reading.

He considered no book dangerous that was well written; he held this

opinion because of his intimate union of foundation and form: anything

well written could not be badly thought out or basely conceived. It was

not the crude detail, the raw fact that was pernicious or harmful, or

likely to soil the intelligence; all that is in nature. There is nothing

moral or immoral but the soul of him who represents nature, rendering it

grand, beautiful, serene, small, ignoble, or tormenting. Such a thing as

an obscene book well written could not exist, according to him.

Certainly he was very liberal in the reading he recommended to me, yet

he was decided in allowing me nothing for amusement alone, and never

would permit me to leave a book unfinished. "Continue to read the

history of the Conquest," he wrote me, "and do not allow yourself to

begin books and then leave them for some time. When one undertakes to

read a book, it should be finished at a single blow. It is the only way

of seeing it as a whole and of deriving any profit from it. Accustom

yourself to following this idea. Since you are my pupil, I do not wish

you to have that disconnected way of thinking, a mind unable to follow

out anything, which is the attribute of persons of your sex."

He held to this intellectual discipline, judging it to be very useful.

His teaching sought to impress itself upon my mind in the strongest

manner possible. So easy in some ways, he was very rigorous on certain

points; thus, he wished that the virtue of a woman consisted not alone

of purity of morals, but that she might add that to what is exacted in

an honest man.

My lesson finished, my uncle would seat himself at his table in his

high-back, oak armchair and there remain until seven o'clock, allowing

himself only a moment from time to time, to go to his window and breathe

large whiffs of air. Then we dined, and chatted together awhile, as

after breakfast. At nine o'clock, or ten at the latest, he would again

take up his work with zeal, prolonging it far into the night. He was

never more in the spirit of it than in these solitary hours when no

sound could come to trouble him.

He remained thus many months in succession, seeing no one but Louis

Bouilhet, his intimate friend, who came each Sunday, staying until

Monday morning. A part of the night was passed in reading the work of

the week. What delightful hours of expansion! There were loud cries of

exclamation without end, some controversy over rejecting or keeping some

epithet, or some reciprocal enthusiasm!

Three or four times a year, my uncle would go to Paris to pass some days

at the house of the Helder's. All his distractions were limited to short

absences. However, in 1856, having decided to publish _Madame Bovary_,

he went to live at No. 42 Boulevard du Temple, in a house belonging to

M. Mourier, director of the theatre of the _Délassements-Comiques_.

Bouilhet was presenting his first piece, _Madame de Montarcy_, at the

Odéon that year. He had already preceded his friend, left Rouen and his

profession as tutor to live entirely by letters. My grandmother was not

long in joining them; she spent some of the winter months in a furnished

apartment, and two years later installed herself in the same house with

her son, on the story above.

Although living so near, we were very independent. My uncle had taken

into his service a valet named Narcisse, the queerest individual

possible; he had been a domestic in my grandfather's house, and his

drollery as well as his zeal prompted my uncle to engage him. Narcisse,

an established farmer, married, and the father of six children, had left

his wife and family with the greatest eagerness to follow the son of his

old master for whom he had a respect amounting to fanaticism, but joined

to that the greatest forgetfulness of difference in station. One day he

returned completely drunk; my uncle perceived this and seated, or rather

tumbled him into a chair in the kitchen. He aided him to reach his room,

and to stretch himself out on the bed. Then Narcisse, in a supplicating

air, said: "Ah! sir! complete your goodness by pulling off my boots."

And this was done by the too indulgent master!

Our friends amused themselves with the reflections of this servant and

his repartee; certain of them sent him their books. He was often found

sitting in the study, or before a bookcase, with a feather duster under

one arm and a book in his hand; he read in a high voice, imitating his

master. But these artistic endeavours, joined to the abuse of small

glasses, completely disordered the brain of the poor devil; and he was

obliged to return to the fields.

During these winter months, I regretted the summer days because the

great success of _Madame Bovary_ followed by a famous lawsuit had given

to my uncle a celebrity that made him sought after. He went out much and

I saw less of him.

The apartment of the Boulevard du Temple blossomed on certain days. It

was a pleasure to give little repasts there to our intimate friends; I

remember those in which I took part and which had around the table

Sainte-Beuve, Monsieur and Madame Sandeau, Monsieur and Madame Cornu,

these last brought by Jules Duplan, the faithful friend of Gustave

Flaubert; then Charles d'Osmoy, and Théophile Gautier came very often,

and on Sundays the door was open wide and friends were numerous.

This epoch was for my uncle the beginning of relations which lasted

until his death. He assiduously frequented the _salon_ of the Princess

Mathilde. He found gathered there scholars, artists, and some of his

intimate friends; he relished strongly this intellectual and worldly

life. He went also to the Tuileries and was invited to Compiègne; from

his sojourn at the castle there came to him the thought of a great

romance which should bring out the French and the Turkish

civilisations.

Then he also had dinners at Magny which, in the beginning, numbered only

half a score of people: Sainte-Beuve, Théophile Gautier, the two De

Goncourts, Garvarni, Renan, Taine, the Marquis of Chennevières, Bouilhet

and my uncle. Their conversations abounded in the highest interest.

Finally, the month of May arrived and we returned to the tranquil life

at Croisset.

Beginning in 1860 to write _Salammbô_, my uncle soon perceived that a

voyage to the site of what was once Carthage was necessary to him, and

he set out for Tunis. On his return he accompanied his mother to Vichy.

We went there the two years following.

My grandmother's health not permitting her to go out with me, my uncle

took her place; he accompanied me in my walks and on Sunday even took me

to church, in spite of the independence of his beliefs, or rather

because of that independence. We often went when it was pleasant, and

seated ourselves under the little white-leaved poplars along the main

walk; he would read while I sketched, and interrupting his reading, he

would speak to me of what it suggested to him, or begin to recite verse,

or entire pages of prose which he knew by heart. What he most often

recited was Montesquieu and Chateaubriand. His memory disclosed itself

equally in dates or in historic facts. But let him recall some literary

remembrance and he was truly surprising; in a volume read twenty years

before he could name the page and the spot on the page which had pleased

him; and, going straight to his library and opening the book, he would

say: "Here it is," with a certain satisfaction which made the light

shine in his eyes.

At Vichy he returned to old acquaintances: Doctor Villemain whom he met

in Egypt, and Lambert Bey, one of the adepts of the _Père Enfantin_.

My marriage came in 1864, changing all our life. I lived a great part of

the year at Neuville near Dieppe, going no oftener to Croisset than

twice a year, in the spring and in the autumn. My uncle made only short

visits at my house; any change of place troubling him extraordinarily

and disturbing his work. It was necessary for him to work at an extreme

tension, and it was impossible for him to find himself in this state

elsewhere than at his great round table in his study, where he was sure

that nothing would distract him. This love of tranquillity, which he

carried later to an excess, had begun already to exercise a tyranny upon

his least action. At the end of a few days, I could see that he was

nervous and I felt that he was desirous of returning to his beloved

labour.

For ten years our lives were less mingled, save for the month of April

in 1871. When I returned from England where I had passed some months, I

found him much changed. The war had made a profound impression upon him;

his "old Latin blood" had revolted at this return to barbarity. Obliged

to flee from his house,--for he would not for anything in the world be

under the necessity of speaking to a Prussian,--he took refuge in Rouen

in a little lodging near the Havre quay where he was badly housed. This

seemed to be a bereavement; my grandmother, now aged, no longer occupied

herself with the management of the household, and instead of

transporting their furniture and necessary objects from the country to

the town (and that would have been easy to do), they left all at

Croisset, where a score of men, officers and soldiers, had established

themselves.

The fatal lack of employment that a disturbed life brings, the thought

of his study, his books, his home soiled by the presence of the enemy,

brought to my uncle's heart and mind frightful anxiety and grief. The

arts appeared to him dead. Why? Was it possible? Could it be that an

intelligent country would cause these billows of blood? But there were

scholars who were holding Paris in siege, and hurling projectiles

against the monuments!

He thought that he should return to his house to find nothing there. He

was deceived; save some trifling objects without value, such as cards, a

penknife, or a paper-cutter, they had respected absolutely all that

belonged to him. One thing only about the return was suffocating,--the

odour of the Prussian, as the French call it, an odour of greased boots.

The walls were impregnated with it, through their stay there of three

long months, and it was necessary to paint and redecorate the rooms in

order to get rid of it.

Six months passed without my uncle being able to write, and finally, he

was at my house at Neuville when, yielding to my supplications, he began

again, this time finishing _The Temptation of Saint Antony_.

There was in Gustave Flaubert's nature a sort of impossibility of being

happy, and a tendency continually to turn back in order to compare and

analyse. Even at the age of the most absolute joys, he dissected them so

that he saw nothing in them but the skeleton of pleasure.

When, on descending the Nile, he wrote the pages entitled: _Au bord de

la Cange_, he regretted his home on the banks of the Seine. The

landscape under his eye never seemed to captivate him; it was later that

he recalled it with pleasure, while man, with his foolishness, and his

conversation, was intensely interesting to him. "Foolishness," he would

say, "enters my pores." And when he was reproached for not going out

more, or for remaining so much in the country, he would say indignantly:

"But nature devours me! If I remain extended on the grass for a long

time, I believe that I can feel the plants growing under my body"; and

he would add: "You don't know what trouble confusion and change make

me."

As to himself, in the most grievous events of his life he wrote down his

sensations, seeking, scrutinising the most remote corners of his nature,

however veiled or intimate. A fact in a newspaper, a droll story of

people he knew, stupidities written by authoritative pens, the

manifestation of their self-conceit or their greed, were to him so much

subjects of experience that he recorded them and slipped them into his

portfolio; he could not comprehend the art that sought only gain;

according to him, mere money could not reward the artist; and between

the five hundred francs which the editor Michael Levy sent him for his

five years' work on _Madame Bovary_, and the ten thousand francs which

he received some years later for _Salammbô_, he saw very little

difference.

In his note-books of travel in the Pyrenees at seventeen years of age,

he pointed out the silliness of the reflections of travelers about Lake

Gaube and the inn near Gavarnie. Even here is the beginning of the

_Dictionary of Accepted Ideas by Bouvard and Pécuchet_. This strong

sense of the comic was useful in opposition to his love for the ideal,

as his love for farce corrected his inborn melancholy.

III.

In 1875, the loss of a considerable sum of money changed our

circumstances. My husband saw all that he had disappear in commercial

transactions. Married under the dowry laws so common in Normandy, I

could dispose of only a part of my property in his favour. My uncle made

up the deficit with an entirely spontaneous generosity, giving all that

he possessed to save our position. Nothing remained for him to live on

except the interest that we had engaged to pay him, and the very

mediocre revenue from his books. To sell Croisset was the thought which

first presented itself to our minds; this property had been given me by

my grandmother, with the expressed wish that her son Gustave should

continue to live there. This consideration, added to my uncle's

repugnance to separating himself from it, decided us in the resolution

to keep it. Loneliness weighed upon his tender nature, and an

arrangement of a life in common was agreeable to him. He passed the

greater part of the time in the country; and, in Paris, having taken his

apartment again in the Rue Murillo, we took one on the same landing, on

the fifth floor of a house situated at the angle of the Rue du

Faubourg-Saint-Honoré and the Avenue de la Reine-Hortense.

We were then together as formerly, and our confidential talks were more

frequent, deeper and more intimate than those of my childhood's days. In

the retired life that we led, my uncle spoke to me as to a friend; we

talked on all subjects, but preferably those of literature, religion and

philosophy, which we discussed without any anger or disagreeable

results, although we were often of a different opinion.

It is easy to see that a man who could write _Saint Antoine_ must be

superabundantly occupied with religious thought as found in humanity,

and its manifold manifestations. The old theogonies interested him

extremely, and the excessive in all people had an infinite attraction

for him. The anchorite, the recluse at the Thebans, provoked his

admiration, and he felt towards them as towards the Bouddha on the bank

of the Ganges. He often re-read his Bible. That verse of Isaiah: "How

beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good

tidings!" he thought sublime. "Reflect, sift the thing to the bottom,"

he would say to me enthusiastically.

A pagan on his artistic side, he was, through the needs of his soul,

pantheistic. Spinoza, whom he much admired, did not fail to leave his

imprint upon him. Besides, no belief of his mind, save his belief in

beauty, was so fixed that it was not capable of listening to the other

side, and admitting even, up to a certain point, the obverse. He loved

to repeat with Montaigne, what was perhaps the last word of his

philosophy, that it is necessary to sleep upon the pillow of doubt.

But let us return to the work of the day. Here he is happy in reading to

me the freshly hatched phrase that he has just finished; I assist, as a

motionless witness, the slow creation of these pages so labouriously

elaborated. In the evening, the same lamp lights us, I, seated beside

the large table, where I am employed with my needlework, or in reading;

he, struggling with his work. Bent forward, he writes feverishly, then

turns his back upon his work, strikes his arms upon those of his chair

and utters a groan, for a moment almost like a rattle in the throat; but

suddenly his voice modulates sweetly, swelling proudly: he has found the

desired expression and is repeating the phrase to himself. Then he gets

up and walks around his study with long steps, scanning the syllables as

he goes and is content; it is a moment of triumph after exhausting

labour.

Having arrived at the end of a chapter, he would often give himself a

day of rest in order to read over at his ease what he had written, to

see the "effect." He read in a unique fashion, chanting and emphasising

so much that at first it seemed exaggerated, but ending in a way that

was very agreeable. It was not only his own works that he read in this

way; from time to time he would give real literary sessions, becoming

impassioned with the beauty that he found; and his enthusiasm was

communicative, so that it was impossible to remain cold, or keep from

vibrating with him.

Among the ancients, Homer and Æschylus were his gods. Aristophanes gave

him more pleasure than Sophocles, Plautus than Horace, whose merit he

thought over-praised. How many times have I heard him say that he would

prefer above all things to be a comic poet!

Shakespeare, Byron, and Victor Hugo he profoundly admired, but he never

comprehended Milton. He said: "Virgil has created the amorous woman,

Shakespeare the amorous young girl; all others are more or less

far-removed copies of Dido or Juliette."

In French prose he read again and again Rabelais and Montaigne,

recommending them to all who wished to meddle with writing.

Literary enthusiasms had always existed in him; one that he loved to

recall was that he experienced on his first reading of _Faust_. He read

it on the eve of Easter as he was leaving college; instead of returning

to his father's house, he found himself, not knowing how, in a spot

called "Queen's walk." It is a beautiful promenade planted with high

trees upon the left bank of the Seine, a little removed from the town.

He was seated upon the steep bank; the clocks in the churches across the

river resounded in the air and mingled with the poetry of Goethe.

"Christ had arisen, peace and joy were complete. Announce then, deep

bells, the beginning of the Easter day, celestial sounds, powerful and

sweet! Why seek you me in the dust?" His head was turned and he came

back like one lost in revery, scarcely realising things of earth.

How could this man, so great an admirer of the beautiful, find so much

happiness in uncovering human turpitude, especially that found outside

the realm of virtue? Must it not be from his worship of the true? His

revelations seemed to be the confirmation of his philosophy and he

rejoiced in them through love of that truth which he believed he was

penetrating.

Numerous projects of work occupied his mind. He mentioned especially a

story of the people of Thermopylæ that he intended to begin. He found

that he had lost too much time in the preparatory research for his works

and wished to employ the rest of his life in art, pure art. His belief

in form would cross his mind; this caused him one day to cry out in his

whimsical spontaneity: "I attach myself to the Ideal!" Then immediately

laughing at our applause, he said: "Not bad, that! Poetry, isn't it? I

begin to comprehend art."

A true artist, for him, never could be wicked, for an artist is before

all an observer; the first quality for an observer is to possess good

eyes. If they are blurred with passion, or personal interest, things

escape them; a good heart makes a good mind!

His worship of the beautiful led him to say: "The moral is not only a

part of the æsthetic, but its condition foundationally."

Two kinds of men were especially displeasing to him and were ever a

subject for his disgust: the critic who never produced anything, but

judges all things (to whom he preferred a candle merchant), and the

educated gentleman who believes himself an artist, who has imagined

Venice different from what it is, and has had disillusions. When he met

a person of this kind, there was an explosion of scorn which showed

itself, perhaps through cutting answers (he would pretend that he had no

imagination, never fancied anything nor knew anything) or through a

silence still more haughty.

Up to the time of his death, I had the advantage of continuing that

serious, calm life from which my feminine mind had so much to gain. Many

of my uncle's best friends were dead: Louis Bouilhet, Jules Duplan,

Ernest Lemarié, Théophile Gautier, Jules de Goncourt, Ernest Feydeau,

and Sainte-Beuve, while others were far away. His meetings with Maxime

Ducamp were only rare; from 1852 the two friends no longer followed the

same routes, as their correspondence witnesses.

In friendship my uncle was perfect; of a devotion absolutely faithful,

without envy, happier in the success of a friend than in his own; but he

brought into his friendly relations some exactions that those who were

the object of them found it difficult to support. The heart that was

bound to him by a common love of art (and all his deep attachments were

upon this basis) should belong to him without reserve.

Wherefore, five years before his death, he received this short note in

response to a package containing his _Three Stories_:--

"MY DEAR FRIEND: I thank you for your volume. I have not read any

of it, for I am absolutely besotted by the finishing of a work of

mine. I should have it done in eight or ten days and I shall then

reward myself by reading you. Yours,

MAXIME DUCAMP."

His heart suffered and recoiled on itself bitterly. Where now was the

ardent desire of knowing quickly the thought that springs from the brain

of a friend? Where were those beautiful years of youth? where was the

faith in each other?

Nevertheless, there were still some natures that he loved much. Among

the young, in the first rank, was the nephew of Alfred Le Poittevin, Guy

de Maupassant, his "disciple," as he loved to call him. Then, his

friendship with George Sand was for his mind no less than for his heart,

a great comfort. But of his own generation, he often said that only

Edmond de Goncourt and Ivan Tourgenief remained; with them he tasted

the full joy of æsthetic conversation. Alas! they became more and more

rare, these hours of intimate talks, because, for this overflow of soul

it was necessary to find minds taken up with the same things, and the

sojourns in Paris became farther and farther apart. His solitude, always

terrible, became unbearable when I was not there, and often, to escape

it, he would call on the old nurse of his childhood. At her fireside his

heart would become warm again. In a letter to me he said: "To-day I have

had an exquisite conversation with 'Mademoiselle Julie.' In speaking of

the old times, she brought before me a crowd of portraits and images

which expanded my heart. It was like a whiff of fresh air. She has (in

language) an expression of which I shall make use. It was in speaking of

a lady, 'She was very fragile,' she said, 'thundering so!' _Thundering_

after _fragile_ is full of depth! Then we spoke of Marmontel and of the

_New Heloise_, something that could not be done among ladies nor

scarcely among gentlemen."

When he was much alone, he would sometimes take up his love of nature,

which would relieve him from his work for a moment. "Yesterday," he

wrote, "in order to refresh my poor noddle, I took a walk to Canteleu.

After travelling for two solid hours, Monsieur took a chop at Pasquet's,

where they were making ready for New Year's Day. Pasquet showed a great

joy at seeing me, because I recalled to him 'that poor Monsieur

Bouilhet'; and he sighed many times. The weather was so beautiful, the

moon so bright in the evening that I went out to walk again at ten

o'clock in the garden, 'under the glimmer of the stars of night.' You

cannot imagine what a lover of nature I have become; I look at the sky,

the trees and the verdure with a pleasure I never knew before. I could

wish to be a cow that I might eat grass."

But he would seat himself again at his table and let many months slip by

without being seized with the same desire.

At the beginning of the year 1874, he began _Bouvard and Pécuchet_, a

subject which had interested him for thirty years. He intended it at

first to be very short--a novel of about forty pages. Here is how the

idea came to him: Seated with Bouilhet on a bench of the Boulevard at

Rouen, opposite the asylum for the aged, they amused themselves by

dreaming of what they should be some day; and, having begun gaily the

supposed romance of their existence, suddenly they cried: "And who

knows? we may finish, perhaps, like these old decrepits in this asylum."

Then they began to imagine the friendship of two clerks, their life,

their retiring from business, etc., etc., in order finally to finish

their days in misery. These two clerks became "Bouvard and Pécuchet."

This romance, so difficult of execution, discouraged my uncle at more

than one undertaking. He was even obliged to lay it aside and go to

Concarneau to join his friend George Pouchet, the naturalist.

Down there, on the Brittany strand, he began the legend of _Saint Julian

the Hospitaller_, which was immediately followed by _A Simple Soul_ and

_Hérodias_. He wrote these three stories rapidly and then took up

_Bouvard and Pécuchet_ again, a heavy care, under which he must die.

Few existences bear witness to unity so complete as his: his letters

show that at nine years of age he was preoccupied with art as if he

were fifty. His life, as has been stated by all those who have spoken

about him, was, from the awakening of his intelligence to the day of his

death, the long development of the same passion--Literature. He

sacrificed all to that; his love and tenderness were never separated

from his art. Did he regret in the last years of his life that he had

not followed the common route? Some words which came from his lips one

day when we were walking beside the Seine made me think so: we had just

visited one of my friends whom we had found among her charming children.

"They are in the right," he said to me, alluding to that household of

the honest and good family; "Yes," he repeated to himself, gravely,

"they are in the right." I did not trouble his thoughts, but remained

silent by his side. This walk was one of our last.

Death took him in full health. It was at evening, and his letter was all

good cheer, expressing the joy he felt at seeing himself confirmed in a

conjecture that he had made regarding a plant. He had written me these

interesting lines upon his work, of which only a few pages remained: "I

am right! I have the assurance of the Professor of Botany in the _Jardin

des Plantes_, and I was right; because the æsthetic is true, and to a

certain intellectual degree (when one has some method) one is not

deceived; the reality does not yield to the ideal, but confirms it. It

has been necessary for me to make three journeys into different regions

for _Bouvard and Pécuchet_ before finding their setting, that best fit

for action. Ah! ha! I have triumphed! I flatter myself it is a success!"

He had made arrangements to set out for Paris to join me again. It was

the day of his departure, he was coming from the bath and mounting to

his study; the cook was going up to serve his breakfast, when she heard

him call and hastened to him. Already his tense fingers could not loosen

a bottle of salts which he held in his hand. He tried to utter some

words that were unintelligible in which she could distinguish:

"Eylau--go--bring--avenue--I know him--"

A letter received from me that morning had told him that Victor Hugo was

going to live in the Avenue d'Eylau; it was without doubt a remembrance

of this news that he had in mind, as well as an appeal for help. He was

cared for by his neighbor and friend, Doctor Fortin.

The last glimmer of his thought evoked the great poet who had caused his

whole nature to vibrate. Immediately he fell into unconsciousness. Some

moments later they found that he no longer breathed. Apoplexy had been

the thunderbolt.

CAROLINE COMMANVILLE.

PARIS, _December, 1886_.

CORRESPONDENCE.

TO MADAME X.

CROISSET,

_Monday Night, June, 1853_.

[Illustration: F]Feeling myself in a grand humor of style this morning,

after giving my niece her lesson in geography, I seized upon my

_Bovary_, sketching three pages in the afternoon which I have just

rewritten this evening. Its movement is furious and full, and I shall

doubtless discover a thousand repetitions which it will be necessary to

strike out as soon as I come to look it over a little. What a miracle it

would be for me to write even two pages in a day, when heretofore I have

scarcely been able to write three in a week! With the _Saint Antony_

that was, indeed, the way I worked, but I can no longer content myself

with that. I wish _Bovary_ to be at the same time heavier and more

flowing. I believe that this week will see me well advanced, and that in

about a fortnight I shall be able to read Bouilhet the whole of the

beginning (a hundred and twenty pages), which, if it goes well, would be

a great encouragement, and I shall have passed if not the most difficult

part at least the most annoying. But there are so many delays! I am not

yet at the point where I can credit our last interview at Mantes. What

foolish and severe vexation you must have passed through that week, my

poor friend! About cases like M----, who throw themselves at your feet,

the best thing to do is to pass the sponge over them immediately; but if

you would care the least bit in the world for the elder Lacroix or the

great Sainte-Beuve to receive something on the face or elsewhere, you

have only to tell me and it is a commission of which I shall acquit

myself with despatch on my next visit to Paris, in the old-time manner

between two journeys; but could you not show Lacroix the door with a

single word? What good is there in discussing, replying to, and angering

him? This is all very easy to say in cold blood, is it not? It is always

this accursed passion element which causes us all our annoyances. How

true is Larochefoucauld's remark: "The virtuous man is he who allows

himself to be concerned with nothing." Yes, it is necessary to bridle

the heart, to hold it in leash like an enraged bulldog, and then let it

loose at a bound at the opportune moment. Run, run, my old fellow, bark

loudly and go at top speed; what these rogues have that is superior to

us is patience. So in this story, Lacroix by his cowardly tenacity

wearies De Lisle, who ends by becoming vexed and leaving the game and

_Le Jeune irrité_ (the whole of Sainte-Beuve is in these words) will not

have had finally either a sword in his paunch or a foot to his

coat-tails, and will privately begin his machinations anew, as Homais

would say.

You are astonished to find yourself the butt of so much calumny,

opposition, indifference and ill-will. You will be more so and have

more of it; it is the reward of the good and the beautiful: one may

calculate the value of a man from the number of his enemies and the

importance of a work by the evil said of it. Critics are like fleas

which always jump upon white linen and adore lace. That reproach sent by

Sainte-Beuve to the _Paysanne_ establishes my belief in the _Paysanne_

more firmly than Victor Hugo's praise of it; we give our praise to

everybody, but our blame, no! Who is there that has not made a parody on

the mediocre?

In regard to Hugo, I do not believe that it is time to write to him; you

gave him a month for an answer, and it is not more than two weeks since

our packet left; so it is necessary to wait at least as long as that,

provided it has not been seized. Every precaution was taken, my mother

addressing the letter herself.

What can this phrase in your letter this morning mean in speaking of De

Lisle? "I believe that I was deceived in my impression of yesterday."

The words of the _bourgeois_ at Préault are good. Have I told you what a

curate of Trouville said one day after I had dined with him? When I

refused champagne (I had already eaten and drunk enough to make me fall

under the table), my curate was astonished and turned on me an eye! such

an eye! an eye expressing envy, admiration, and disdain together, and

said to me, shrugging his shoulders: "Come, now! all you young people

from Paris who _gulp down champagne_ with your fine suppers, make very

little mouths when you come to the provinces!" And it was so easy to

understand that between the words "fine suppers" and "gulp" he meant to

say "with the actresses!" What horizons! and to know that I excited

this brave man! In this connection I am going to allow myself a

quotation: "Come now!" said the chemist, shrugging his shoulders, "do

you know about these fine parties at the house of the traitor! the

masked balls! the champagne? All this goes on, I assure you."

"I do not believe that it injures him," objected Bovary.

"Nor I either," quickly replied M. Homais, "and it may be necessary for

him to keep them up or be taken for a Jesuit. But if you only knew what

lives those fellows lead, in the Latin Quarter with their actresses!

Generally speaking, students are well looked upon in Paris. For the

little attractiveness that they have, they are received into the best

society, and there are even ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain who

fall in love with them and, in consequence sometimes give them

opportunities of making fine marriages." In two pages I believe I have

collected all the stupidity that one hears in the provinces about

Paris,--student life, actresses, the pickpockets you encounter in the

public gardens, and the cooking at the restaurants, "always more

unwholesome than provincial cooking."

That stiffness of which Préault accuses me is astonishing; it appears

that when I have on a black coat, I am not the same man. And it is

certain that I am then wearing a kind of disguise which my face and

manners ought to resent, so much effect has the exterior upon the

interior. It is the cap that moulds the head, and all troopers have

about them the imbecile stiffness of hard lines. Bouilhet pretends that,

out in the world, I have the air of a drilled, _bourgeois_ officer. Is

it on this account that the illustrious Turgan calls me "the major?" He

also maintains that I have a military air, and one could pay me no

compliment that would be less agreeable. If Préault knew me, he would,

on the contrary, find that I have a too bare-breasted air like the good

captain; but how beautiful Ferrat must have been with his "good southern

fury;" I can see him there now gasconading; it is tremendous. And,

speaking of the grotesque, I was overwhelmed at the funeral of Madame

Pouchet; decidedly, the good God is romantic, for he continually mingles

the two kinds together. Nevertheless, while I was looking at the poor

Pouchet, who was in torture, shaking like a reed in the wind, do you

know what came up before me? A gentleman who asked me, on my voyage:

"What kind of museums have they in Egypt? _What is the condition of

their public libraries?_" And when I demolished his illusions, he was

desolate. "Is it possible!" said he. "What an unfortunate country! What

a civilization!" etc....

The burial was Protestant, the priest speaking in French beside the

grave; Monsieur would prefer it so ... "since Catholicism is denuded of

the flowers of rhetoric." O humans! O mortals! and to think we are

always duped, that we have the vanity to believe ourselves imaginative,

when the reality crushes us! I went to that ceremony with the intention

of elevating my mind to the point of penetration; to try to discover a

few pebbles; and then--these blocks fell upon my head! The grotesque

deafened my ears, and the pathetic was in convulsions before my eyes.

Whence I draw (or rather withdraw) this conclusion: _It is never

necessary to fear exaggerating_; all the great ones have done it:

Michael-Angelo, Rabelais, Shakespeare and Molière. It is a question of

making a man take an injection when he has no syringe; well, we must

fill the theatre with apothecaries' syringes; that is clearly the way to

reach genius in its true centre, which is very ridiculous. But to

suppress exaggeration, there must be continuity, proportion, and harmony

in itself. If your good men have a hundred feet, your mountains should

be twenty miles high; and what is the ideal if it is not a magnifying?

Adieu; work well, see only friends, mount to the ivory tower, and let

come what may.

TO MADAME X.

CROISSET, _Saturday night_.

Finally I have finished my first part (of the second part); that is, I

am at the point where I had intended to be at our last interview at

Mantes; you see how great a delay this is! I shall pass still another

week in re-reading all this and copying it, and a week from to-morrow I

shall spout it to my lord Bouilhet. If this goes, a great anxiety will

be removed, at least, and one good thing I can be sure of, that the

foundation is well established; but I think however, that this book will

have one great fault: that is, the fault of material proportion. I have

already two hundred and sixty pages which contain only the preparation

for action, some expositions, more or less disguised, of character (it

is true that they are graduated), and of landscapes and places. My

conclusion, which will be the recital of the death of my little woman,

her funeral, and the sorrow of the husband, will follow with sixty pages

at least. There remains, then, for the body of the action one hundred

and twenty, or one hundred and sixty pages at the most. Is this not a

great defect? What reassures me (in a slight degree), however, is that

this book is a biography rather than a gradual development. The drama is

a small part of it, so the dramatic element is well drowned in the

general tone of the book; perhaps it will not be noticed that there is a

want of harmony between the different phases so much as in their

development; and then, it seems to me that life itself is a little like

this. Our passions are like volcanoes; they grumble continually, but the

eruption is only intermittent.

Unfortunately, the French mind has such a rage for amusement, it is

necessary for it always to be seeing things! It cares so little for that

which is poetry for me, or for knowing the _exposition_, that perhaps,

as one may strike it picturesquely through tableaux, or morally through

psychological analysis, it may serve exceedingly well that I wear a

blouse, or have the appearance of doing so.

This is not the only day that I have suffered from writing in this

language and thinking in it! At bottom I am German! The force of study

has rubbed off all my southern mists. I wish to make books where only

phrases are written (if one may so put it), as one lives by breathing

only air; what vexes me is the trickery of the plan, the combinations

for effect, and all the calculations which are the art of it, and upon

which the effect of style depends exclusively.

And you, good muse, dear colleague in all (colleague comes from

_colligere_, to bind together), have you worked well this week? I am

curious to see that second recital. I have to recommend only two things:

First, follow your metaphors closely; second, no details outside the

subject; work in a straight line. _Parbleu!_ We shall make some

arabesques when we wish to, and better than anybody's. We must show the

classicists that we are more classic than they, and make the

romanticists turn pale with rage by surpassing their attempts. I believe

the thing feasible, although of no importance. When a verse is good, it

loses its school. A good verse by Boileau resembles a good verse by

Hugo. Perfection has everywhere the same character, which is precision

and justness.

If the book I am writing with so much trouble comes to any good, I shall

have established two truths by its execution alone, which are for me

axioms of knowledge: first, that poesy is purely subjective, that there

are not in literature beautiful art subjects, and that Yvetot is worth

as much as Constantinople; consequently, one may write one thing as well

as another, it matters not what. The artist must raise all; he is like a

pump, having in him a great duct which descends to the entrails of

things, to the deepest stratum, and makes leap into the light, in giant

jets, what was under the earth and seen by no one but himself.

Shall I have a letter from you on awakening? Your letters have not been

numerous this week, my friend! But I suppose it is work which has kept

you. What an admirable face Father Babinet, member of the reading

committee of the Odéon, will have! I can see now his _facies_, as my

chemist would say, listening to the pieces as they are read.

There is taking place here an interesting case. A judge of the court of

assizes, a brave man, is accused of killing his wife and then, having

sewed her in a sack, of throwing her into the water. This poor woman had

many lovers, and some one discovered at her house (it was a workman of

the lowest class) a portrait and a letter from a gentleman, a chevalier

of the Legion of Honor, a rallying Legitimist, Member of the General

Council, of the Building Associations, etc., ... of all the

Associations, well known among the vestry, member of the Society of

Saint-Vincent de Paul, of the Society of Saint-Regis, of the Children's

Society, and all the humbugs possible; highly placed in fine society of

the right kind, one of those persons who are an honour to a country and

of whom it is said: "We are happy to possess such a gentleman"; and

here, at a blow, it is discovered that this merry fellow has been

carrying on relations (this is the phrase) with this merry

lass--relations of the most disgusting kind, yes, Madame! Ah! great

Heavens! I jeer like a beggar when I see all those fine people in the

hands of the law; the humiliations these good gentlemen receive (they

who find honours everywhere) seem to me to be the just punishment of

their false pride. It is a disgrace to be always wishing to shine; it is

debasing to mount to the heights and then sink into the mire with the

mob! One should keep his level. And while there is not in my make-up

much liking for democracy, I nevertheless love what is common, even

ignoble, when it is sincere. But that which lies, which poses, which

affects a condemnation of passion and assumes a grimace of virtue,

revolts me beyond all limits. I feel now for my kind a serene hatred, or

an inactive pity which is akin to it. I have made great progress in two

years, and the political state of things has confirmed my old theories à

_priori_, upon the biped without feathers, whom all in all I consider a

turkey and a vulture.

Adieu, dear dove.

TO MADAME X.

CROISSET, _Tuesday, 1 A.M._

I AM overwhelmed; my brain is dancing in my head. I have been since six

o'clock this evening until now recopying seventy-seven successive pages,

and now they make but fifty-three. It is torture. The ramifications of

my vertebræ to the neck, as M. Enault remarks, are broken from having

bent my head so long. What with the repetition of words, the _alls_, the

_buts_, the _fors_ and the _howevers_ I had to strike out, there is

never any end to it, which is the way with this diabolical prose. There

are, nevertheless, good pages, and I believe that, as a whole, it moves

along; but I doubt if I shall be ready to read it all to Bouilhet on

Sunday. Just think! since the end of February, I have written

fifty-three pages! What a charming profession! It is like whipping cream

when one would like to be rolling marbles.

I am very tired, but have, however, many things to say. I have just

written four lines to Ducamp, not for you; that would have been a

reason for his showing you more malevolence--I know the man. This is the

reason why I wrote him: to-day I received the last package of his

photographs, of which I had never spoken to him, and the note was to

thank him for it. That was all; I said nothing further. If, in the

article on the philosophers, on Wednesday, he uses your name accompanied

with any harmful allusions, I will do what you wish; but for my part, I

should propose to break off squarely in a pretty, well-defined letter.

However, do not let us torment ourselves, since the thing will doubtless

not take place. It is Bouilhet's opinion (my note to-day is from a

contrary hypothesis) that it is best to be on good terms when the

rupture comes and be able to say to him: here is still another time that

you are disobliging to me; good evening and good-bye. Do you understand?

As for Enault's article, it seems to me, good Muse, as if you had

exaggerated it. It is stupid and foolish and all that, with its

_feminosities_, "sensible woman," "younger woman," etc.--which have

evidently come from Madame ----, who is jealous of you from all reports,

and on that I would bet my head. It is our opinion, both Bouilhet's and

mine, that he labours hard over his little monthly billets without ever

saying anything. Bouilhet is profoundly indignant and proposes not even

going to see him when he next goes to Paris; but what difference does it

make to us, the opinion of my lord Enault, either written or spoken? As

Ducamp said to Ferrat: Can you expect, in the midst of the whirlwind in

which he lives, with his fascinating personality, his officer's badge,

his receptions at the house of M. de Persigny, etc., that he could

preserve enough perspicacity to feel a new, original, or novel thing?

Besides, in this arrangement, there may be something agreed upon. We

never can turn a negro white and we never can hinder the mediocre from

being mediocre. I assure you that if he were to say to me "I have had

curvature of the spine or softening of the brain," it would make me

laugh. Do you know what I found out to-day from his photographs? The

only one he did not publish was the one representing our hotel at Cairo

and the garden before our windows where I stood in Nubian costume; it is

a bit of malice on his part. He wishes that I did not exist; I have

weighed him, as have you and every body else. The work is dedicated to

Cormenin, with a dedicatory epigraph in Latin, and in the text is an

epigraph taken from Homer, all in Greek. The good Maxime does not know a

declension, but that does not matter. He has had the German work of

Leipsius translated and has pillaged it impudently (in the text that I

looked over) without quoting it once. I heard that from a friend of his

that I met on the train; you know I said he must have pillaged it, for

there were all sorts of inscriptions that he never would have valued,

which are not in the books that we meet in our travels, but which he

reports as having been appreciated by him; it is like all the rest of

his work. As for the _Paysanne_, the eulogy which Bouilhet wrote him

about it (at the same time he wrote to De Lisle, a letter which has met

with no response) is the cause, you may be sure, of his remark to

Ferrat. Finally, all that is of very little importance. Still, we have

been very much vexed all Sunday afternoon from it, these stories

demoralising lord Bouilhet a little, in which respect I find him weak,

and me also, for I am caught in it. Frankly now, it is stupid to permit

these fellows to trouble us so. In fact, I find that in injuries,

stupidities, foolishness, etc., it is necessary to be angry only when

something is said to one's face. Make grimaces at my back as much as you

wish, my breeches alone contemplate you.

I love you so much when I see you calm and know that you are working

well, and still more, perhaps, when I know that you are suffering, for

then you write me such superb letters, so full of fire. But, poor dear

soul, take care of thyself, and tax only in moderation thy southern

fury, as you called it in speaking of Ferrat.

The advice of De Lisle relative to the _Acropole_ is good. First, send

the manuscript to Villemain as you sent it to Jersey (I have received no

letter about it, which seems strange, and my mother will write some day

to Madame Farmer if I receive nothing); you could even make some

corrections if you find it necessary although it seems good to me,

except about the Barbarians, which I persist in finding much the

weakest; second, try to have it appear in the _Press_; third, we shall

find some plan, you may be sure. Bouilhet will be there this winter and

he will aid you. His last fossil, the third piece, "Springtime," is

superb; there is in it a pecking of birds around gigantic nests which is

gigantic in itself. But he gets too sad, my poor Bouilhet; it is

necessary to straighten up and em ... humanity which em ... us! Oh! I

shall be avenged! In fifteen years from now I shall have undertaken a

great modern romance where they shall all pass in review. I think that

_Gil Blas_ has perhaps done this, and Balzac remotely, but the fault of

his style is that his work is rather more curious than beautiful and

stronger than it is brilliant. These are projects of which I should not

speak, as all my books are only the preparation for two, which I will

finish if God lends me life. I mean this one and the Oriental story.

You must see the story of the journey that Enault has published on his

return from Italy! He is a wag and a droll fellow, who will make an

article in that cavalier fashion upon one with whom he has dined without

first asking his permission. As for the article, it is simply stupid,

and that one he wrote upon Bouilhet was no stronger. He underlines

_bosom_ and _rags_, exclaims "Eight children! O, Poesy!" paints the

school where he thinks it probable there are a certain number of

children that will be known to literature! No, if one does not keep

himself from all this, _I say it in all seriousness_, there is danger of

his becoming an idiot.

My father said repeatedly that he never would wish to be a doctor in a

hospital for the insane, because if one dealt seriously with madness, he

ended by becoming mad himself. It is the same in this case; from

becoming too much disturbed by these imbeciles, there is danger of

becoming such ourselves. Heavens! what a headache I have! I must go to

bed! my thumb is hollowed by my pen and my neck is twisted.

I find Musset's observation of Hamlet that of a profound _bourgeois_,

and this is the reason why: he reproaches the inconsistency of Hamlet, a

sceptic, seeing with his eyes the soul of his father. But first, it was

not the soul that he saw, but a phantom, a shadow, a thing, a materially

living shadow, which has no connection either in popular or in poetic

ideas with the abstract idea of the soul. It is we, metaphysicians and

modern people, who speak this language; and then, Hamlet did not

_question_ at all the philosophic sense, he was _dreaming_. I believe

this observation of Musset's is not his own but Mallefille's; in the

preface of his _Don Juan_, he is superficial, to my mind. A peasant in

our day could see a phantom perfectly and, the next day in broad

daylight, reflect in cold blood upon life and death, but not upon flesh

and the soul. Hamlet was not reflecting upon the subtleties of some

school, but upon human thoughts. On the contrary, it is this state of

perpetual fluctuation in Hamlet, this vagueness in which he holds

himself, this want of decision in will and solution in thought, which

makes him sublime.

Bouvard and Pécuchet: A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life, part 2 · 第 5 / 6 章

Louis Hyacinthe Bouilhet was born at Cany (Seine Inférieure), the 27th