Flaubert

Flaubert is a heavy-footed animal. It is plain that he is a Norman. All his work has great specific gravity. He disgusts me. One of Flaubert's master strokes was the conception of the character of Homais, the apothecary, in Madame Bovary. I cannot see, however, that Homais is any more stupid than Flaubert himself, and he may even be less so.

The Giants

The good Zola, vigorous, dull and perspiring, dubbed his contemporaries, the French naturalistic novelists, "Giants." What an imagination was possessed by Zola!

These "Giants" were none other than the Goncourts, whose insignificance approached at times imbecility, and in addition, Alphonse Daudet, with the air of a cheap comedian and an armful of mediocre books—a truly French diet, feeble, but well seasoned. These poor Giants, of whom Zola would talk, have become so weak and shrunken with time, that nobody is able any longer to make them out, even as dwarfs.