"The greater part of their time was passed on the veranda in the open air, while the trees, with their autumnal crowns of glory, were spread in rich masses before them, gradually sloping up to the pale horizon; or they sat in a pavilion at the end of the alley, whose sole article of furniture was a sofa covered with gray linen. Black spots defiled the mirror; the walls exhaled a mouldy odor; yet the two sat undisturbed, chatting of themselves, of others, of anything whatsoever, in a state of mutual rapture. Sometimes the sunbeams, working their way through the Venetian blinds from the ceiling to the floor, formed the strings of an enormous lyre." This lyre, I am quite confident, was the genuine lyre of old, dating from the days of the troubadours, and the days of Flaubert's youth. At this point, it actually seems as though Flaubert had wakened it from its slumbers. "L'éducation sentimentale" appeared just as the empire was entering upon the epoch of its last crisis. The book had but a moderate sale. The press unanimously pronounced it tedious, and, of course, immoral. The most painful thing of all to Flaubert was the long silence that followed. The work of seven years seemed lost. The cause of this was simply that the author had labored too hard. In order to portray the Paris of the forties, he had studied old pictures and old plans of the city, had reconstructed vanished streets, and had searched through several thousand newspapers for references to public speeches, and descriptions of street life and street fights. It had been his desire to give an absolutely perfect picture of the times, and he had made it too elaborate. The historic apparatus is most wearisome in its effect. Flaubert's hatred of stupidity, as in so many other instances, had led him too far. Even in his youth it had belonged to the amusements he and Bouilhet had entered into together, to make as faithful copies as possible of official speeches, of poems written for special occasions, such as the dedication of a bell, or the burial of a monarch, of festival addresses and popular orations of every kind. Great quantities of such things were found after Bouilhet's death. In "Madame Bovary" Flaubert had entertained himself by communicating the entire speech of a _chef de bureau_ at the agricultural exposition, with its feigned enthusiasm and stylistic naïveté; in this last work he furnished _in extenso_ and, furthermore, in Spanish, a liberal speech delivered by a "patriot from Barcelona," in the year 1848, at an assemblage of the people in Paris. The speech is unsurpassed as an example of the phraseology of freedom and progress; but both the speech I and the entire assemblage before whom it is delivered, are out of place owing to their very slight connection with the main personages of the book. The picture of the times exceeds its proper limits: here, as well as in "Salammbô," the pedestal has become too large for the figure.