The Lemoine Affair Read Free

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 blamingthe 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