In reply to all his wild harangues, George Sand gives wise answers, smiling as she gives them, and using her common sense with which to protect herself against the trickery of words.  What has he to complain of, this grown-up child who is too naive and who expects too much?  By what extraordinary misfortune has he such an exceptionally unhappy lot?  He is fairly well off and he has great talent.  How many people would envy him!  He complains of life, such as it is for every one, and of the present conditions of life, which had never been better for any one at any epoch.  What is the use of getting irritated with life, since we do not wish to die?  Humanity seemed despicable to him, and he hated it.  Was he not a part of this humanity himself?  Instead of cursing our fellow-men for a whole crowd of imperfections inherent to their nature, would it not be more just to pity them for such imperfections?  As to stupidity and nonsense, if he objected to them, it would be better to pay no attention to them, instead of watching out for them all the time.  Beside all this, is there not more reason than we imagine for every one of us to be indulgent towards the stupidity of other people?

“That poor stupidity of which we hear so much,” exclaimed George Sand.  “I do not dislike it, as I look on it with maternal eyes.”  The human race is absurd, undoubtedly, but we must own that we contribute ourselves to this absurdity.

There is something morbid in Flaubert’s case, and with equal clearness of vision George Sand points out to him the cause of it and the remedy.  The morbidness is caused in the first place by his loneliness, and by the fact that he has severed all bonds which united him to the rest of the universe.  Woe be to those who are alone!  The remedy is the next consideration.  Is there not, somewhere in the world, a woman whom he could love and who would make him suffer?  Is there not a child somewhere whose father he could imagine himself to be, and to whom he could devote himself?  Such is the law of life.  Existence is intolerable to us as long as we only ask for our own personal satisfaction, but it becomes dear to us from the day when we make a present of it to another human being.

There was the same antagonism in their literary opinions.  Flaubert was an artist, the theorist of the doctrine of art for art, such as Theophile Gautier, the Goncourt brothers and the Parnassians comprehended it, at about the same epoch.  It is singularly interesting to hear him formulate each article of this doctrine, and to hear George Sand’s fervent protestations in reply.  Flaubert considers that an author should not put himself into his work, that he should not write his books with his heart, and George Sand answers: 

“I do not understand at all, then.  Oh no, it is all incomprehensible to me.”