Gustave Flaubert as Seen in His Works and Correspondence Book

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This is an OCR edition with typos.
Excerpt from book:
CHAPTER II THE LAW STUDENT CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIS SISTER In the summer of 1839 Flaubert finally left school, and, after a short journey in the South of France and Corsica with Dr. Jules Cloquet, a friend of his father's, went to Paris, like his friend Chevalier, to study law. From this time, till his return home four years later, his chief correspondent was his sister; and in these letters we get a glimpse of the home life, and of the vigorous, active, outward personality of the lad whose thoughts were often so sombre. The Flaubert family continued their love of acting long after their childhood, and though they do not seem to have continued performances on the stage, they were in the habit of assuming the parts of sundry fictitious characters for one another's amusement; one of Gustavo's chief roles was that of the 'garcon,' a personage whose characteristics are not otherwise indicated. We know of him that he had a marked laugh, which we may assume to have been inane, loud and fatuous, and that Gustave once discovered an epitaph for him : ' Here lies one given to all the vices.' On the whole, he does not seem to have been an estimable character, and perhaps the less we know of him the better. This vein of buffoonery remained with Flaubert all his life ; he would do anything to amuse his friends ; anything to make the people that he liked laugh heartily. Even in his correspondence heoccasionally poses in a character not his own; and late in life wrote a sham autobiography, for GeorgeSand, of the Rev. Father Cruchard, whose character, he professed, was his own. The study of law was not congenial to Flaubert; he took it up in obedience to the wishes of his father, a practical man, who saw no future in literature, and seems to have classed literary men with the sword-thrus...