"And since upon every occasion a moral is demanded, here follows mine: "If there be anywhere two young people who pass their Sundays in reading the poets together, who confide to each other all their efforts and their plans, all the striking similes and every pertinent word that may occur to them, and who, although otherwise indifferent to the opinion of the world, conceal this passion of theirs with virgin modesty, I would give them this advice. "Go, side by side, into the forests, repeat verses to each other, take into your souls the sap of the trees, and the everlasting might of the masterworks of creation, yield to the impression of the sublime. Should you ever progress so far that, in all the occurrences about you, as soon as they fall under your observation, you see only an illusion that is to be described, and this to so great a degree that nothing, not even your own existence seems to you to have any other purpose than to serve as an object for description, and you become firmly resolved to make whatever sacrifice the calling may demand, then come boldly forward and give books to the world." Rarely has an author, without making a direct effort to that effect, more keenly characterized his own peculiarity. He has consecrated his life to the calling of describing illusions. I know very well that, in his estimation, everything that transpires is for the true author an image, merely a phantom to be held fast by art. We can, however, unhesitatingly invest his words with the wider significance that life, as a whole, is to be conceived as a series of dissolving phantoms, and then the sentence applies accurately to himself. Take a mental survey of his materials from the first unworldly and worldly dreams through which Emma Bovary strives to rise above the emptiness of provincial life and the insipidity of her marriage, to the hallucinations of a St. Antonius,--what else have they all been to him than illusions for description! An illusion has the dual character that corresponds to Flaubert's temperament. The phantom, apart from its delusive attribute, is beautiful; it has coloring and perfume; it fills the mind and communicates to it an increase of life. Thus tempered, it attracted the adorer of beauty in Flaubert. But an illusion is, furthermore, hollow and empty, is often foolish and hideous, is not rarely, at the same time, comic; and thus conceived it captivated the realist in Flaubert, the man whose gaze penetrated the soul's life, and who found satisfaction in dissolving the air-castles of fancy into their simplest elements. II. How did he become what in his first novel we learned him to be?