No such criticism can be urged against the three short stories, the _Trois Contes_, in which Flaubert proves himself not only one of the greatest writers of all time, but also one of the greatest story-tellers. This little book is a fit pendant to the novels, since it represents both the Flaubert of _Madame Bovary_ and the Flaubert of _Salammbo_. _Un Cœur Simple_, the first of the three, is the story of a servant woman and her parrot, a subject that de Maupassant might have chosen. So completely is it weaned from himself, that no one would suspect that Flaubert wrote it after his mother's death, for the pleasure, in describing the provincial household, of remembering his own childhood. It and the two stories, _St. Julien l'Hospitalier_ and _Hérodias_, which are purely romantic in subject and treatment, and more scrupulous in technique than the finest of Gautier, are among the most beautiful tales that the nineteenth century produced. All three answer the supreme test of a dozen readings as admirably as those old improvisations from whose spirit they are so utterly alien. [_La Tentation de Saint Antoine_ and _Bouvard et Pécuchet_.] That is the sum of Flaubert's work in pure narrative. There are beside it two books, one a _Tentation de Saint Antoine_, that he spent his whole life in bringing to perfection, and the other, _Bouvard et Pécuchet_, that he left unfinished at his death. They are among the most wonderful philosophic books of the world. In an Oriental dream, a dialogue form with stage directions so explicit and descriptive as to do the work of narrative, and in a story whose form might have been dictated by Voltaire, whose material was the same as that used in the novels, he expressed man in the presence of Religion, and man in the presence of Knowledge. The legend of St. Anthony is treated by the Flaubert who loved the East, the story of Bouvard and Pécuchet by the Flaubert who tortured himself with observation of the bourgeois. St. Anthony is tempted of love and of all the religions; at last, not triumphing, but shaken and very weary, he kneels again, and Flaubert leaves him. Bouvard and Pécuchet, the two clerks given by the accident of a legacy the aloofness and the opportunity for development that was Anthony's, are tempted of love and of all the knowledges; at last made very miserable they return to their desks; that is where Flaubert would have left them if he had lived. To discuss the settings of these two great expositions is to ask the question that was asked by a disciple at the end of Voltaire's _Dream of Plato_. 'And then, I suppose, you awoke?' It is only permissible after recognising the grandeur of the underlying idea. [The statue of _Le Penseur_.]