is undergoing, proves nothing against the laws of the eternal
progression of men and things, and, if I have gained any principles
in my mind, good or bad, they are neither shattered nor changed by
it. For a long time I have accepted patience as one accepts the sort
of weather there is, the length of winter, old age, lack of success
in all its forms." But Flaubert, thinking that he has detected in
her public utterances a decisive change of front, privately urges
her in a finely figurative passage of a letter which denounces
modern republicanism, universal suffrage, compulsory education, and
the press--Flaubert urges her to come out openly in renunciation of
her faith in humanity and her popular progressivistic doctrines. I
must quote a few lines of his attempt at seduction:

"Ah, dear good master, if you could only hate! That is what you
lack, hate. In spite of your great Sphinx eyes, you have seen the
world through a golden colour. That comes from the sun in your
heart; but so many shadows have risen that now you are not
recognizing things any more. Come now! Cry out! Thunder! Take your
great lyre and touch the brazen string: the monsters will flee.
Bedew us with drops of the blood of wounded Themis."

That summons roused the citadel, but not to surrender, not to
betrayal. The eloquent daughter of the people caught up her great
lyre--in the public Reponse a un ami of October 3, 1871. But her
fingers passed lightly over the "brazen string" to pluck again with
old power the resonant golden notes. Her reply, with its direct
retorts to Flaubert, is not perhaps a very closely reasoned
argument. In making the extract I have altered somewhat the order of
the sentences: