[70] Noise had become an obsession to Jules de Goncourt, says his brother Edmund, in a note to the former’s _Lettres_: “It seemed to him that he had ‘an ear in the pit of his stomach,’ and indeed noise had taken, and continued to take as his illness increased, as it were in some _féerie_ at once absurd and fatal, the character of a persecution of the things and surroundings of his life.... During the last years of his life he suffered from noise as from a brutal physical touch.... This persecution by noise led my brother to sketch a gloomy story during his nightly insomnia.... In this story a man was eternally pursued by noise, and leaves the rooms he had rented, the houses he had bought, the forests in which he had camped, forests like Fontainebleau, from which he is driven by the hunter’s horn, the interior of the pyramids, in which he was deafened by the crickets, always seeking silence, and at last killing himself for the sake of the silence of supreme repose, and not finding it then, for the noise of the worms in his grave prevented him from sleeping. Oh, noise, noise, noise! I can no longer bear to hear the birds. I begin to cry to them like Débureau to the nightingale, ‘Will you not be still, vile beast?’” (_Lettres de Jules de Goncourt_, Paris, 1885.) [71] _Étude sur Gustave Flaubert_, Paris, 1885. [72] Among the fragments that have been preserved some are of great sweetness:-- “_Quanto fu dolce il giogo e la catena_ _De’ suoi candidi bracci al col mio volte,_ _Che sciogliendomi io sento mortal pena;_ _D’altre cose non dico che son molte,_ _Chè soverchia dolcezza a morte mena._” [73] Mantegazza, _Del Nervosismo dei grandi uomini_, 1881. [74] _Journal des Savants_, Oct., 1863. [75] _Epistolario_, v. 3, p. 163. [76] Vicq d’Azir, _Elog._, p. 209. [77] _Physiologie des Génies_, 1875. [78] _Science et Matérialisme_, 1890, p. 103. [79] Brewster, _Life_, 1856. [80] _Revue Scientifique_, 1888. [81] Michiels, _Le Monde du Comique_, 1886. [82] Réveillé-Parise, _op. cit._ [83] Perez, _L’enfant de trois à sept ans_, 1886. [84] Scherer, _Diderot_, 1880. [85] _Ueber die Verwandtschaft des Genies mit dem Irrsinn_, 1887. [86] Bertolotti, _Il Testamento di Cardano_, 1883. [87] G. Flaubert, _Lettres à Georges Sand_, Paris, 1885. [88] Delepierre, _Histoire Littéraire des fous_, Paris, 1860. [89] Réveillé-Parise, _Physiologie et Hygiène des hommes livrés aux travaux de l’esprit_, Paris, 1856. [90] Mantegazza, _Physiognomy and Expression_. [91] Arago, ii. p. 82. [92] Plutarch, _Life, &c._ [93] Radestock, _op. cit._ [94] Moreau, _op. cit._, p. 523. [95] _Correspondance_, p. 119, 1887. [96] _Memorie dell Istituto Lombardo_, 1878. [97] Letter to Giordani, Aug., 1817. [98] _Sette Anni di Sodalizio._ [99] B. de Boismont, _op. cit._ p. 265. [100] Hagen, _Ueber die Verwandtschaft, &c._, 1877. [101] Roger, _Voltaire Malade_, 1883.