Complete Works of Gustave Flaubert

by Gustave Flaubert

  I have not the time to say any more to you today. People are coming in. I have read Fromont et Risler; I charge you to thank M. Daudet, to tell him that I spent the night in reading it and that I do not know whether I prefer Jack or Risler; it is interesting, I might almost say GRIPPING.

  I embrace you and I love you, when will you give me some Flaubert to read?

  G. Sand

  CCCXII. To GEOBGE SAND

  Monday evening

  Dear master, Thanks to Madame Lina’s kind note, I betook myself to V. Borie’s yesterday and was most pleasantly received. My nephew went to carry him the documents today. Borie has promised to look after the affair; will he do it?

  I think that he is in just the position to do me indirectly the greatest service that any one could do me. If my poor nephew should get the capital which he needs in order to work, I could get back a part of what I have lost and live in peace the rest of my days.

  I presented myself to Borie under your recommendation, and it is to you that I owe the cordiality of his reception. I do not thank you (of course) but you can tell him that I was touched by his kind reception (and stimulate his zeal if you think that may be useful).

  I have been working a great deal lately. How I should like to see you so as to read my little medieval folly to you! I have begun another story entitled Histoire d’un coeur simple. But I have interrupted this work to make some researches on the period of Saint John the Baptist, for I want to describe the feast of Herodias.

  I hope to have my readings finished in a fortnight, after which I shall return to Croisset from which spot I shall not budge till winter, — my long sessions at the library exhaust me. Cruchard is weary.

  The good Tourgueneff leaves this evening for Saint Petersburg. He asks me if I have thanked you for your last book? Could I be guilty of such an oversight? You will see by my Histoire d’un coeur simple where you will recognize your immediate influence, that I am not so obstinate as you think. I believe that the moral tendency, or rather the human basis of this little work will please you!

  Adieu, dear good master. Remembrances to all yours.

  I embrace you very tenderly.

  Your old Gustave Flaubert

  CCCXIII. To MAURICE SAND

  Tuesday evening, 27th

  All I can say to you, in the first place, my dear friend, is, that your book has made me pass a sleepless night. I read it instantly, at one fell swoop, only stopping to fill my good pipe from time to time and then to resume my reading.

  When the impression is a little less fresh I shall take up your book again to find the flaws in it. But I think that there are very few. You must be content? It ought to please? It is dramatic and as amusing as possible!

  Beginning with the first page I was charmed with the sincerity of the description. And at the end I admired the composition of the whole, the logical way the events were worked out and the characters related.

  Your chief character, Miss Mary, is too hateful (to my taste) to be anything but an exact picture. That is one of the choicest parts of your book, together with the homelife, the life in New York?

  Your good savage makes me laugh out loud when he is at the Opera.

  I was struck by the house of the missionaries (Montaret’s first night). You make it seem real. Naissa scalping, and then wiping her hands on the grass, seemed to me especially well done. As well as the disgust that she inspires in Montaret,

  I venture a timid observation: it seems to me that the flight of father Athanasius and of Montaret, when they escape from their prison, is not perfectly clear? Is not the material explanation of the event too short?

  I do not care for, as language, two or three ready-made locutions, such as “break the ice.” You can see that I have read you attentively! What a pedagogue I make, eh! I am telling you all that from memory, for I have lent your book, and it has not been returned to me yet. But my recollection of it is of a thing very well done.

  Don’t you agree with me that a play of very great effect could be made from it for a boulevard theatre?

  By the way, how is Cadio going?

  Tell your dear mamma that I adore her.

  Harrisse, from whom I have received a letter today, charges me to remember him to her, and, for my part, I charge you to embrace her for me.

  And I grasp your two hands heartily and say “bravo” to you again, and faithfully yours.

  Gustave Flaubert

  CCCXIV. To MADAM MAURICE SAND

  Thursday evening, 25th May, 1876

  Dear Madam,

  I sent a telegram to Maurice this morning, asking for news of Madam

  Sand.

  I was told yesterday that she was very ill, why has not Maurice answered me?

  I went to Plauchut’s this morning to get details. He is in the country, at Le Mans, so that I am in a state of cruel uncertainty.

  Be good enough to answer me immediately and believe me, dear madam,

  Your very affectionate,

  Gustave Flaubert

  4 rue Murillo, Parc Monceau

  CCCXV. To MADAM LINA SAND

  Dear Madam,

  Your note of this morning reassures me a little. But that of last night had absolutely upset me.

  I beg you to give me very frequent news of your dear mother-in-law.

  Embrace her for me and believe that I am

  Your very devoted

  Gustave Flaubert

  Beginning with the middle of next week, about Wednesday or Thursday,

  I shall be at Croisset.

  Saturday morning, 3d June, 1876.

  CCCXVI. To MAURICE SAND

  Croisset, Sunday, 24 June, 1876

  You had prepared me, my dear Maurice, I wanted to write to you, but I was waiting till you were a little freer, more alone. Thank you for your kind thought.

  Yes, we understood each other, yonder! (And if I did not remain longer, it is because my comrades dragged me away.) It seemed to me that I was burying my mother the second time. Poor, dear, great woman! What genius and what heart! But she lacked nothing, it is not she whom we must pity.

  What is to become of you? Shall you stay in Nohant? That good old house must seem horribly empty to you! But you, at least, are not alone! You have a wife…a rare one! and two exquisite children. While I was with you, I had, over and above my grief, two desires: to run off with Aurore and to kill M. Marx.[Footnote: A reporter for le Figaro.] There you have the truth, it is unnecessary to make you see the psychology of the thing. I received yesterday a very sympathetic letter from good Tourgueneff. He too loved her. But then, who did not love her? If you had seen in Paris the anguish of Martine![Footnote: George Sand’s maid.] That was distressing.

  Plauchut is still in Nohant, I suppose. Tell him that I love him because I saw him shed so many tears.

  And let yours flow, my dear friend, do all that is necessary not to console yourself, — which would, moreover, be impossible. Never mind! In a short time you will feel a great joy in the idea alone that you were a good son and that she knew it absolutely. She used to talk of you as of a blessing.

  And when you shall have rejoined her, when the great-grand-children of the grandchildren of your two little girls shall have joined her, and when for a long time there shall have been no question of the things and the people that surround us, — in several centuries, — hearts like ours will palpitate through hers! People will read her books, that is to say that they will think according to her ideas and they will love with her love. But all that does not give her back to you, does it? With what then can we sustain ourselves if pride desert us, and what man more than you should have pride in his mother!

  Now dear friend, adieu! When shall we meet now? How I should feel the need of talking of her, insatiably!

  Embrace Madam Maurice for me, as I did on the stairway at Nohant, and your little girls.

  Yours, from the depths of my heart,

  Your Gustave Flaubert

  CCCXVII. To MAURICE SAND

  Croiss
et, Tuesday, 3rd October, 1876

  Thank you for your kind remembrance, my dear friend. Neither do I forget, and I dream of your poor, dear mamma in a sadness that does not disappear. Her death has left a great emptiness for me. After you, your wife and the good Plauchut, I am perhaps the one who misses her most! I need her.

  I pity you the annoyances that your sister causes you. I too have gone through that! It is so easy moreover to be good! Besides that causes less evil. When shall we meet? I want so much to see you, first just to see you — and second to talk of her.

  When your business is finished, why not come to Paris for some time? Solitude is bad under certain conditions. One should not become intoxicated with one’s grief, however much attraction one finds in doing so.

  You ask me what I am doing. This is it: this year I have written two stories, and I am going to begin another so as to make the three into one volume that I want to publish in the spring. After that I hope to resume the big novel that I laid aside a year ago after my financial disaster. Matters are improving in that direction, and I shall not be forced to change anything in my way of living. If I have been able to start at work again, I owe it partly to the good counsel of your mother. She had found the best way to bring me back to respect myself.

  In order to get the quicker at work, I shall stay here till New Year’s Day, — perhaps later than that. Do try to put off your visit to Paris.

  Embrace your dear little girls warmly for me, my respects to Madam

  Maurice, and-sincerely yours, ex imo.

  Gustave Flaubert

  1877

  CCCXVIII. To MAURICE SAND

  Saint-Gratien par Sannois, 20th August, 1877

  Thank you for your kind remembrance, my dear Maurice. Next winter you will be in Passy, I hope, — and from time to time we can have a good chat. I even count on seeing myself at your table by the side of your friends whose “idol” I am.

  You speak to me of your dear and illustrious mamma! Next to you I do not think that any one could think of her more often than I do! How I miss her! How I need her!

  I had begun un coeur simple solely on account of her, only to please her. She died while I was in the midst of this work. Thus it is with our dreams.

  I still continue not to find diversion in existence. In order to forget the weight of it, I work as frantically as possible.

  What sustains me is the indignation that the Imbecility of the Bourgeois affords me! Summed up at present by the large party of law and order, it reaches a dizzy height!

  Has there been anything in history more inept than the 16th of May?

  Where is there an idiot comparable to the Bayard of modern times?

  I have been in Paris, or rather at Saint-Gratien, for three days. Day after tomorrow I leave the princess, and in a fortnight I shall make a little trip to Lower Normandy for the sake of literature. When we meet I shall talk a long time with you, if you are interested, about the terrible book that I am in the process of concocting. I shall have enough work in it to take me three or four years. Not less!

  Don’t leave me so long without news. Give a long look for me at the little corner of the holy ground!…My regards to your dear wife, embrace the dear little girls and sincerely yours, my good Maurice,

  Your old friend

  Gustave Flaubert

  LAST LETTER

  CCCXIX. To MAURICE SAND

  Tuesday morning, April, 1880

  My dear Maurice,

  No! Erase Cruchard and Polycarp and replace those words by what you like.

  The Public ought not to have all of us, — let us reserve something for ourselves. That seems to me more decent (quod decet). You do not speak of a COMPLETE EDITION? Ah! your poor dear mamma! How often I think of her! And what need I have of her! There is not a day when I do not say: “If she were there, I should ask her advice.”

  I shall be at Croisset till the 8th or the 10th of May. So, my old fellow, when you wish to come there, you will be welcome. I embrace you all from the oldest to the youngest.

  Cruchard for you,

  Polycarp for the human race,

  Gustave Flaubert for Literature

  The Trial

  “Flaubert dissects Madame Bovary” — a caricature by A. Lernot, printed in La Parolie, 1869

  THE PUBLIC vs. M. GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

  In 1850 Flaubert began work on Madame Bovary, his most celebrated novel, which took five years to complete. After being serialised in the Revue de Paris in 1856, the government brought an action against the novel’s publisher and author on the charge of immorality. The trial was held the following year, but both Flaubert and his publisher were fully acquitted. Madame Bovary then appeared in book format for the first time, receiving a very positive reception. A full account of the trial and acquittal is provided in this section of the eBook.

  CONTENTS

  SPEECH OF THE PROSECUTING ATTORNEY M. ERNEST PINARD

  PLEA FOR THE DEFENSE, BY M. SENARD

  THE DECISION

  SPEECH OF THE PROSECUTING ATTORNEY M. ERNEST PINARD

  Gentlemen, in entering upon this debate, the Public Attorney is in the presence of a difficulty which he cannot ignore. It cannot be put even in the nature of a condemnation, since offenses to public morals and to religion are somewhat vague and elastic expressions which it would be necessary to define precisely. Nevertheless, when we speak to right-minded, practical men we are sure of being sufficiently understood to distinguish whether a certain page of a book carries an attack against religion and morals or not. The difficulty is not in arousing a prejudice, it is far more in explaining the work of which you are to judge. It deals entirely with romance. If it were a newspaper article which we were bringing before you, it could be seen at once where the fault began and where it ended; it would simply be read by the ministry and submitted to you for judgment. Here we are not concerned with a newspaper article, but entirely with a romance, which begins the first of October, finishes the fifteenth of December, and is composed of six numbers, in the Revue de Paris, 1856. What is to be done in such a case? What is the duty of the Public Ministry? To read the whole romance? That is impossible. On the other hand, to read only the incriminating texts would expose us to deep reproach. They could say to us: If you do not show the case in all its parts, if you pass over that which precedes and that which follows the incriminating passages, it is evident that you wish to suppress the debate by restricting the ground of discussion. In order to avoid this twofold difficulty, there is but one course to follow, and that is, to relate to you the whole story of the romance without reading any of it, or pointing out any incriminating passage; then to cite incriminating texts, and finally to answer the objections that may arise against the general method of indictment.

  What is the title of the romance? Madame Bovary. This title in itself explains nothing. There is a second in parentheses: Provincial Morals and Customs. This is also a title which does not explain the thought of the author but which gives some intimation of it. The author does not endeavour to follow such or such a system of philosophy, true or false; he endeavours to produce certain pictures, and you shall see what kind of pictures! Without doubt, it is the husband who begins and who terminates the book; but the most serious portrait of the work, the one that illumines the other paintings, is that of Madame Bovary.

  Here I relate, I do not cite. It takes the husband first at college, and it must be stated that the boy already gave evidence of the kind of husband he would make. He is excessively heavy and timid, so timid that when he arrives at the college and is asked his name, he responds: “Charbovari” He is so dull that he works continually without advancing. He is never the first, nor is he the last in his class; he is the type, if not of the cipher at least of the laughing-stock of the college. After finishing his studies here, he goes to study medicine at Rouen, in a fourth-story room overlooking the Seine, which his mother rented for him, in the house of a dyer of her acquaintance. Here he studies his medical books, and arrives little b
y little, not at the degree of doctor of medicine, but that of health officer. He frequented the inns, failed in his studies, but as for the rest, he had no other passion than that of playing dominoes. This is M. Bovary.

  The time comes for him to marry. His mother finds him a wife in the widow of a sheriff’s officer of Dieppe; she is virtuous and plain, is forty-five years old, and has six thousand a year income. Only, the lawyer who had her capital to invest set out one fine morning for America, and the younger Madame Bovary was so much affected, so struck down by this unexpected blow that she died of it. Here we have the first marriage and the first scene.

  M. Bovary, now being a widower, begins to think of marrying again. He questions his memory; there is no need of going far; there immediately comes to his mind the daughter of a neighboring farmer, Mile. Emma Rouault, who had strangely aroused Madame Bovary’s suspicions. Farmer Rouault had but one daughter, and she had been brought up by the Ursuline sisters at Rouen. She was little interested in matters of the farm; her father was anxious for her to marry. The health officer presented himself, there was no difficulty about the dot, and you understand that with such a disposition on both sides, these things are quickly settled. The marriage takes place. M. Bovary is at his wife’s knees, is the happiest of men and the blindest of husbands. His sole occupation is anticipating his wife’s wishes.

  Here the rôle of M. Bovary ends; that of Madame Bovary becomes the serious work of the book.