thousand birds in the country, the movement of the ships on the
waters. I love also absolute, profound silence, and, in short, I
love everything that is around me, no matter where I am."

The last passage gives a glimpse of the seventeenth of January,
1869, a typical day in Nohant:

"The individual named George Sand is well: he is enjoying the
marvellous winter which reigns in Berry, gathering flowers, noting
interesting botanical anomalies, making dresses and mantles for his
daughter-in-law, costumes for the marionettes, cutting out scenery,
dressing dolls, reading music, but above all spending hours with the
little Aurore, who is a marvellous child. There is not a more
tranquil or a happier individual in his domestic life than this old
troubadour retired from business, who sings from time to time his
little song to the moon, without caring much whether he sings well
or ill, provided he sings the motif that runs in his head, and who,
the rest of the time, idles deliciously.... This pale character has
the great pleasure of loving you with all his heart, and of not
passing a day without thinking of the other old troubadour, confined
in his solitude of a frenzied artist, disdainful of all the
pleasures of the world."

Flaubert did "exercise" a little--once or twice--in compliance with
the injunctions of his "dear master"; but he rather resented the
implication that his pessimism was personal, that it had any
particular connection with his peculiar temperament or habits. He
wished to think of himself as a stoic, quite indifferent about his
"carcase." His briefer black moods he might acknowledge had
transitory causes. But his general and abiding conceptions of