If we were seeking to prove that an author can put NOTHING BUT
HIMSELF into his art, we should ask for no more impressive
illustions than precisely, Madame Bovary and Salammbo. These two
masterpieces disclose to reflection, no less patently than the works
of George Sand, their purpose and their meaning. And that purpose
and meaning are not a whit less personal to Flaubert than the
purpose and meaning of Indiana, let us say, are personal to George
Sand. The "meaning" of Madame Bovary and Salammbo is, broadly
speaking, Flaubert's sense of the significance--or, rather, of the
insignificance--of human life; and the "purpose" of the books is to
express it. The most lyrical of idealists can do no more to reveal
herself.

The demonstration afforded by a comparison of Salammbo and Madame
Bovary is particularly striking because the subject-matters are
superficially so unlike. But take any characteristic series of
pictures or incidents from Salammbo: take the passing of the
children through the fire to Moloch, or the description of the
leprous Hanno, or the physical surrender of the priestess to her
country's enemy, or the following picture of the crucified lion:

"They were marching through a wide defile, hedged in by two chains
of reddish hillocks, when a nauseous odor struck their nostrils, and
they believed that they saw something extraordinary at the top of a
carob tree; a lion's head stood up above the foliage.

"Running towards it, they found a lion attached to a cross by its
four limbs, like a criminal; his enormous muzzle hung to his breast,
and his forepaws, half concealed beneath the abundance of his mane,
were widely spread apart, like a bird's wings in flight; under the