We may take account at the same time of the nature of his pessimism. For there are many ways of being a pessimist, and Flaubert's was not at all like that of Schopenhauer or Leopardi. His pessimism, real and sincere, proceeded neither from personally grievous experiences of life, as did that of the recluse of Recanati, nor from a philosophic or logical view of the conditions of existence in which humanity is placed, like the pessimism of the Frankfort philosopher. Flaubert was rather a victim of what Théophile Gautier, in his well-known _Emaux et Camées_, calls by the singularly happy name of "the Luminous Spleen of the Orient." To tell the truth, what Flaubert could not pardon in humanity was that it did not make enough of art, and so his pessimism was a consequence of his æstheticism. "As lovers of the beautiful," he tells us, "we are all outlaws! Humanity hates us; we do not serve it; we hate it because it wounds us! Let us love, then, in art, as the Mystics love their God; and let all pale before this love." These lines are dated 1853, before he had published anything. Therefore, Flaubert did not express himself thus because he was not successful. His self-love was not in question! No one had yet criticised or discussed him. But he felt that his ideal of art, an art which he could not renounce, was opposed to the ideal methods, if they are ideal, held by his contemporaries; and the vision of the combats that he must face at once exalted and exasperated him. His pessimism was of the élite, or rather the minority of one who feels himself, or at least believes himself to be, superior, and who, knowing well that he will always be in the minority, fears, and rightly too, that he will not be recognised. It is a form of pessimism less rare in our day than one would think, and Taine, among others, said practically the same thing when he averred that "one writes only for one or two hundred people in Europe, or in the world." It may be that this is too individual a case! A more liberal estimate would be that we write for all those who can comprehend us; that style has for its first object the increase of such a number; and, after that, if there still be those who cannot comprehend us, no reason for despair exists on our part or on theirs. Let us follow, now, the consequences of this principle in Flaubert's work, and see successively all that his work means, and the dogma of art which proceeds from it. At first you are tempted to believe that Flaubert's work is diverse, though inconsiderable in volume; and, primarily do not see clearly the threads which unite the _Education Sentimentale_ with the _Tentation de Saint Antoine_ or _Salammbô_ with _Madame Bovary_.