For me Rosalie Arnoux is the unique attraction. Henry James calls her a failure—spiritually. She is one of the most charming portraits in French fiction, and yet a perfectly virtuous woman. The aroma of her character pervades the pages of this wonderful “encyclopædia of life.” What shall I tell you of the magical descriptions of the ball at the Alhambra and other masked balls at La Maréchale’s; of the duel; of the street fighting during the revolution of ’48; of the cynical journalist, Hussonet, a type for all times; of the greedy Des Lauriers; of peevish Senecal; of good-hearted Dussardier; of Pellerin, who reads all the works on æsthetics extant so as to paint beautifully; of Mlle. Vatnaz, skinny, slender, amorous, and enigmatic? What shall I say of M. Roque, of Louise, of the actor Delmar, who turns his profile to his audiences; of Madame Dambreuse and her sleek infidelities; of her avaricious husband; of Frédéric’s foolish mother, so like himself; of Regimbart, formidable, thirsty Regimbart, with his oaths, his daily café-route, and his magnificent air of bravado? The list is not large, but every figure is painted by a master. And the vanity, the futility, the barrenness of it all! It is the philosophy of disenchantment, and about the book hangs the inevitable atmosphere of defeat, of mortification, of unheroic resignation. It is life, commonplace, quotidian life, and truth is stamped on its portals. All is vanity and vexation of spirit. The tragedy of the petty has never before been so mockingly, so menacingly, so absolutely displayed. An unhappy book, you say! Yes; and proves nothing except that life is but a rope of sand. Read it if you care for art in its most quintessentialized form, but if you are better pleased with the bravery and show of things external, avoid this novel, I beseech you, for it is as bitter in the mouth as a page torn from Ecclesiastes. “And thus it is that Flaubert ... became a sort of monk of literature, shut away from the world, solitary and morose, beholding humanity with horror, with repulsion, with irony, with sarcasm, with an evil laugh sadder than tears, and casting upon mankind what are called glances of pity—in other words, pitiless glances, ... just as a friar passes a life of contemplation and meditation, saying to himself that God is great and that men are small, so he spent almost the whole of a fairly long life saying to himself again and again that men are small and that art is great, scorning the one and serving the other with an equal fervor and an equal ardor of uncompromising devotion.” Émile Faguet in his excellent monograph on Flaubert—in Les Grands Ecrivains Français—thus summed up his life. Paul Bourget called his works “a manual of nihilism,” and declared that in each sentence of Flaubert’s “inheres a hidden force.” More significant still is Bourget’s anecdote illustrating Flaubert’s almost insane devotion to style.