escaped unscathed from all the anathemas of the old theology; and
she abounded, like St. Francis, in her sense of the new dispensation
and in her benedictive exuberance towards all the creatures of God,
including not merely sun, moon, and stars and her sister the lamb
but also her brother the wolf. On this principle she loves
Flaubert!--and archly asserts her arch-heresy in his teeth. He
complains that her fundamental defect is that she doesn't know how
to "hate." She replies, with a point that seems never really to have
pierced his thick casing of masculine egotism:

"Artists are spoiled children and the best are great egotists. You
say that I love them too well; I like them as I like the woods and
the fields, everything, everyone that I know a little and that I
study continually. I make my life in the midst of all that, and as I
like my life, I like all that nourishes it and renews it. They do me
a lot of ill turns which I see, but which I no longer feel. I know
that there are thorns in the hedges, but that does not prevent me
from putting out my hands and finding flowers there. If all are not
beautiful, all are interesting. The day you took me to the Abbey of
Saint-Georges I found the scrofularia borealis, a very rare plant in
France. I was enchanted; there was much----in the neighborhood where
I gathered it. Such is life!

"And if one does not take life like that, one cannot take it in any
way, and then how can one endure it? I find it amusing and
interesting, and since I accept EVERYTHING, I am so much happier and
more enthusiastic when I meet the beautiful and the good. If I did
not have a great knowledge of the species, I should not have quickly
understood you, or known you or loved you."