For some, it had meant retiring from business, having a mansion on the Avenue du Bois, influence at the Academy; and even a yacht that would have taken them in the summer to cold countries — but not to the Pole, which is not without interest, but the food there smells of oil, the twenty-four-hour day must bother your sleep, and also how do you keep clear of the polar bears?
For some, millions were not enough; they would have played them all at once on the stock market; and, buying shares at the lowest rate the day before they rose back up — a friend would have let them know when — they could see their capital increase a hundredfold in a few hours. Rich as Carnegie then, though they would take care not to waste it on humanitarian utopias. (In any case, what’s the use? A billion shared among all the French wouldn’t make one single person rich, it’s been calculated.) But, leaving luxury to the vain, they would only seek comfort and influence, would have themselves elected President of the Republic, Ambassador to Constantinople, would have their bedrooms padded with cork that would deaden the sound of their neighbors. They would not join the Jockey Club, having the correct opinion of the aristocracy. A patent of nobility from the Pope attracted them more. Perhaps you could have a papal title without paying. But then what would be the good of so many millions? In short, they would augment the annual gift to the Pope while still blaming the Church. What possible use can the Pope have for five million pieces of lacework, while so many country priests are dying of hunger?
But some, thinking of the wealth that could have come to them, felt ready to faint; for they would have placed it all at the feet of a woman by whom they had been scorned until now, who would have finally given them the secret of her kiss and the sweetness of her body. They saw themselves with her, in the country, till the end of their days, in a house all made of whitewood, by the dark shore of a large river. They would have known the cry of the petrel, the coming of the fog, the rocking of the ships, the formation of clouds, and would have remained for hours with her body on their lap, watching the tide rise and the moorings knock together from their terrace, in a wicker chair, beneath a blue-striped marquee, on the bowling green. And they ended up seeing nothing more than two clusters of purple flowers, trailing down to the swift water that they can almost touch, in the bleak light of an afternoon without sun, along a reddish wall crumbling away. For those people, the very excess of their distress took away the strength to curse the accused; but everyone hated him, reflecting that he had cheated them of debauchery, of honors, of fame, of genius; sometimes of more indefinable fancies, of all that was profound and sweet that everyone harbored, ever since childhood, each in the particular folly of his dream.
III CRITIQUE OF THE NOVEL BY M. GUSTAVE FLAUBERT ON “THE LEMOINE AFFAIR,” BY SAINTE-BEUVE, IN HIS COLUMN IN THE CONSTITUTIONAL
The Lemoine Affair … by Mr. Gustave Flaubert! Especially so soon after Salammbô, the title is altogether a surprising one. What’s this? The author has set up his easel in the midst of Paris, at the law courts in the Palais de Justice, in the very chamber of criminal appeals …: and here we thought he was still in Carthage! Mr. Flaubert — estimable both in his impulse and his predilection — is not one of those writers whom Martial so subtly mocked and who, past masters in one field, or with the reputation of being so, confine themselves to it, dig themselves down into it, anxious above all not to offer any foothold for criticism, exposing only one wing at a time in any maneuver. Mr. Flaubert, on the contrary, likes to multiply his reconnaissance missions and his sorties, and confront the enemy on all sides — nay, he accepts all challenges, regardless of the conditions that are offered, and never demands a choice of weapons, never seeks strategic advantage from the lay of the land. But this time, it must be acknowledged, this precipitous about-face, this return from Egypt (or very nearly) like Napoleon, which no victorious Battle of the Nile can justify, has not seemed very fortunate; we have detected in it, or thought we did, let’s say, a faint whiff of mystification. Some people have even gone so far as to utter, not without some semblance of justification, the word “gamble.” Has Mr. Flaubert at least won this gamble? That is what we are about to examine in all candor, but without ever forgetting that the author is the son of a much to be lamented man whom we have all known, a professor at the École de Médecine in Rouen, who left his mark and his influence on his profession and in his province; or that this likeable son — whatever opinion you may proffer about what our over-hasty young are not afraid, boosted by friendship, to hail already as his “talent”—deserves, in any case, every consideration for the renowned simplicity of his narrations, always sure and perfectly executed — he, the very opposite of simplicity as soon as he picks up a pen! — by the refinement and invariable delicacy of his procedure.
The narrative begins with a scene that, if it had been better directed, could have given us a rather favorable idea of Mr. Flaubert, in that immediate and unexpected genre of the sketch, the study drawn from reality. We are at the Palais de Justice, in the Criminal Court, where the Lemoine case is underway, during an adjournment of the hearing. The windows have just been closed by order of the magistrate. And here an eminent lawyer assures me that the magistrate would in fact not be sitting there, but would more naturally and properly have withdrawn to the council chamber during the adjournment. This of course is only a minor detail. But how do you, who have just told us (as if you had actually counted them!) the number of elephants and onagers in the Carthaginian army, how do you hope, I ask you, to have your word believed when, for a reality that is so nearby, so easily verifiable, so basic even and not in the least detailed, you commit such blunders! But we’ll move on: the author wanted an opportunity to describe the magistrate, and he didn’t let one escape him. This magistrate has “a clown’s face” (which is enough to make the reader lose interest), “a gown too narrow for his girth” (a rather clumsy characterization that portrays nothing), “aspirations to wit.” We’ll again overlook the clown’s face! The author is of a school that never sees anything noble or decent in humanity. Mr. Flaubert, however, a thorough Norman if ever there was one, comes from a land of subtle chicanery and lofty cunning that has given France quite a few prominent lawyers and magistrates, I don’t want to single out anyone here. Without even limiting ourselves to the boundaries of Normandy, the image of a magistrate such as Jeannin about whom Mr. Villemain has given us more than one delicate description, of a Mathieu Marais, a Saumaise, a Bouhier, even of the pleasant Patru, of one of these men who are distinguished by the wisdom of their advice and who are of such compelling merit, would be as interesting, I believe, and as true as that of the magistrate with “a clown’s face” who is shown to us here. Enough about the clown’s face! But if he has “aspirations to wit,” how do you know about it, since he hasn’t even opened his mouth yet? Similarly, a little later on, the author will point out to us, among the crowd he describes, a “reactionary.” That is a common enough designation today. But here, I ask Mr. Flaubert again: “A reactionary? How can you recognize one at a distance? Who told you? How do you know about it?” The author evidently is amusing himself, and all these characteristics are invented on a whim. But that’s nothing yet; we’ll go on. The author continues portraying the public, or rather purely chosen “models” he has grouped together in his studio at his leisure: “Taking an orange out of his pocket, a black man …” Traveler! You use only words of truth, of “objectivity,” you make a profession of it, you make a display of it; but, beneath this self-styled impersonality, how quickly we can recognize you, even if it’s only from this black man, this orange, that parrot just now, who have just disembarked with you, all these accessories you have brought back with you that you hurry to slap onto your sketch — the most variegated, I declare, and the least authentic, the least lifelike one your brush has ever struggled with.