626
PARTISAN REVIEW
How far he did indeed succeed in his best hopes for the intellec–
tual grace of Caro may be judged by American readers from the de–
scription of her which Willa Cather gives after meeting her at a
hotel at Aix in 1930, when she was a woman of eighty-four. And
nothing can suggest better the moral limitations of Miss Cather and
her feminized universe than the fact that although she renders the
most intense and delicate homage to the charm of Mme. Franklin–
Grout (as she had become), speaking at length of her manners, her
command of many languages, the purity of her passion for art, her
friendship with her uncle's great friends, her closeness to her uncle
himself, she gives no intimation that for the sake of Caro, and at her
behest, Flaubert had put himself into financial jeopardy, surrendering
the fortune upon which he depended for his literary life, and with
very little thanks from the beneficiary.
Up to 1875 the business affairs of Caroline's husband Com–
manville seemed to justify an elaborate establishment in Paris and a
fashionable and expensive way of life. Then it became clear that
Commanville was on the verge of bankruptcy. To save the Comman–
villes from disgrace Flaubert pledged his entire fortune-when it came
to the bourgeois pieties he was to be outdone by no one. He gave up
his pleasant flat in Paris and took cheaper rooms, and in general
greatly curtailed his expenses. He sold the property at Deauville from
which he derived his income. At one time it seemed probable that
he would have to give up the house at Croisset, where he had lived
virtually all his life. This horrified him and wrung from him an
agonized cry-without it, he said, using the English word, he would
have no
home.
George Sand offered to buy it if possible and let him
live in it all his life, but the sale proved unnecessary. In all, Flaubert
put at the disposal of the Commanvilles 1,200,000 francs, in return
for which he was to receive a small allowance.
The full extent of the sacrifice can be properly understood only
if we feel the force of Gautier's remark that Flaubert's bourgeois
fortune was part of his creative endowment. The sacrifice being
what it was, the Commanvilles' subsequent behavior gives the inci–
dent a Lear-like character. They did not pay the allowance promptly
and Flaubert had to importune for it. They were angry when Flau–
bert, with much reluctance and humiliation, consented to allow his
friends to procure a pension for him; they did not forgive the friends
