SOURCE: Wright, Barbara. “Valdieu: A Forgotten Precursor of Fromentin's Dominique.” Modern Language Review 60, no. 4 (October 1965): pp. 520-28.

[In the following essay, Wright considers the influence that Valdieu had on Fromentin and the writing of Dominique.]

Within a tradition like that of the French personal novel, direct literary ‘influences’ are as elusive as the end of the rainbow, and just about as insubstantial when they are found. Few authors of personal novels have been spared acrimonious debates as to literary sources and possible plagiarisms,¹ when in fact they were contributing to a collective culture in which each exponent accepts an inherited framework on which to base his own individual contribution. Taken as a whole, the history of the French personal novel emerges, not as the work of petty pilferers, but as a noble tradition acting on writers who, in their turn, enhance it and pass it on to posterity.

It is not, then, in order to prove a direct literary ‘influence’ that the memory of Valdieu is here being recalled, but rather as representing a climate of ideas contemporaneous with the period when Fromentin was working on Dominique. Valdieu was also in the tradition of the personal novel, although it was initially given the modest designation of ‘nouvelle’. First published in a serialized version,²Valdieu was then brought out in book form by Dentu in 1860. The author of this novel was Fromentin's closest friend and confidant, Armand du Mesnil, who, in his capacity as an official at the Ministère de l'Instruction publique, had deemed it prudent to adopt a pseudonym and chose that of L.-A. Duval. That Valdieu, a novel similar in many respects to Dominique, should have been written by the friend from whom Fromentin was to seek guidance and encouragement, is surely an event of striking importance. It is all the more surprising that the publication of this novel has not hitherto been given more attention, in view of the fact that, when published in book form, it was actually dedicated by du Mesnil to Fromentin in the following words:

À EUGèNE FROMENTIN

Cette petite page sera la meilleure et la plus sincère de mon livre. J'y mets ton nom en me disant d'un coeur ferme:—ton ami.

A.D.

Paris, mars 1860.

The date of March 1860 is significant. It coincides with the period when Fromentin, having made an abortive attempt to write Dominique in response to an invitation by the editor of the Revue des Deux Mondes, François Buloz, in September 1859, had dropped the work in despair and had turned again to his career as a professional painter. During this intermission, as his excellent biographer has noted,³ he also collaborated with Ludovic Halévy on Meça-Oudah, a flamboyant Oriental spectacle for theatre, sharply in contrast with the delicate tones of Dominique. It was only after the unfinished Meça-Oudah had, in its turn, been abandoned that Fromentin once again picked up the threads of his novel. At this time, as at all the creative periods of his mature life, he had the unremitting support and sympathy of du Mesnil and even, as it now emerges, his example.

The friendship between Fromentin and du Mesnil dates from 1842, when they met in Paris. From the two volumes of Pierre Blanchon,⁴ their mutual affection may be seen with striking clarity: a journey to North Africa together; the marriage of Fromentin to du Mesnil's niece; and the constant encouragement which they gave to each other in times of anxiety and dejection. All this, and more, is to be found in the manuscript collection of Monsieur Dahl, the great-grandson of Fromentin, who has kindly given permission for much of this hitherto unused documentation to be incorporated in the present article. A man of many interests, du Mesnil rose to a position of prominence in public life and made a major contribution to the reorganization of the French educational system. This position he combined with a keen interest in politics, which led him to write a well-known work on the Franco-Prussian war, Paris et les Allemands, 1872. In the family, ‘l'oncle du Mesnil’, as he came to be known, emerges as an affectionate and particularly lovable character. Some sketches, of a very high quality, which he did for his son Louis, whose death at an early age was the great sorrow of his life, show a love of the grotesque and a ‘grain de bizarrerie’⁵ quite foreign to Fromentin. Above all, however, the letters, both published and unpublished, exchanged between the two men form an eloquent testimony to their long and deep association. Fromentin, for instance, writes to du Mesnil from North Africa in the following mood, a mood which recurs on countless occasions throughout his correspondence:

… à toi je voudrais ne pas manquer, et, il faut le dire, tu es presque aussi sévère que moi pour moi, mais de beaucoup plus ambitieux. …

(p. 73)

Similarly, the letters of du Mesnil to Fromentin abound in tributes to their mutual feelings of friendship and esteem. ‘Rien’, he writes fondly, ‘ne peut faire à notre affection’.⁶ On another occasion, after a temporary separation from Fromentin, he writes saying:

On ne devrait pas se quitter quand on s'est rendu mutuellement nécessaire.⁷

In their work, du Mesnil and Fromentin constantly gave each other encouragement. Even as early as 1845, Fromentin was giving advice to his friend on a short story written for a La Rochelle publication⁸ and, in the years which followed, frequently urged him to conquer his moods of despair and to persevere with his writing. Du Mesnil, for his part, aware of Fromentin's great talent, was always trying to boost his faltering self-confidence and to counteract his ‘défaillances outrées’. In this respect, he sometimes approximated to the rôle of Augustin in Dominique, warning of the dangers of excessive self-analysis to the detriment of spontaneity and sensibility. It was to du Mesnil that Fromentin turned instinctively for guidance in his work, picturing his friend, in a striking image, as ‘toujours là, derrière la chaise où je travaille’. In a letter to du Mesnil from Saint-Raphaël, Fromentin is still more explicit:

Je commencerai demain ou après-demain ma première lettre-journal. Ce sera le seul moyen de vivre près de toi, de t'avertir heure par heure de mes impressions et de te faire savoir, cher ami, à quel point tu assistes à mon travail. J'ai un besoin immense de te contenter, car je suis convaincu que tu ne te tromperas pas le jour où tu jugeras que ce que j'ai fait est bien.

(p. 58)

It appears, then, that du Mesnil was not only friend and adviser to Fromentin, proof-reader and publicity manager; he was also involved in the whole creative process at every stage of its development. The manuscripts of Monsieur Dahl contain evidence of some practical assistance given by du Mesnil in folios 1 to 12 of the manuscript of Une Année dans le Sahel; these folios have every appearance of having been written in his hand, as is also the case with a large number of folios in the Zorrh manuscript, forming part of the same collection. Going back further still to the realm of creative inspiration, du Mesnil seems to have been aware of Fromentin's tendency towards what he describes, in a letter of September 1854, as ‘l'horrible manie du dénigrement de toi-même’, a kind of paralysis born of the dichotomy between the self that acts and the self that observes. He implores his friend to forget all their ‘discussions oiseuses’, and to try to write spontaneously; otherwise, he adds in ominous tones, ‘l'imprécation d'Annibal n'est rien’, thereby, incidentally, mentioning the name of the hero for whom the adolescent Dominique was to feel such personal anguish.

In July 1861, when Fromentin was in Fontainebleau, starting work afresh on Dominique after a break of well over a year, du Mesnil writes sympathizing with the difficulties besetting his friend's inventive powers. He urges him not to force things and assures him ‘que cette petite chaleur que tu attends viendra’. Jokingly, he adds:

je sais du reste que chez toi l'inspiration est un peu comme le chien de Jean de Nivelle. J'en demande bien pardon à l'inspiration.⁹

Again, it was du Mesnil who, on Fromentin's own admission to Gaston Romieux, urged that Dominique should be rehandled and later justified his decision in the following unpublished section of a letter quoted in part by Blanchon:

Où en es-tu comme santé et comme état d'esprit? Je donnerais bien cher pour que tu puisses me dire que tu t'es remis au travail et que la veine est revenue. Malgré l'ennui très grand que j'ai éprouvé de te voir démonté, malgré le chagrin personnel de Marion,¹⁰ je me demande si j'ai eu tort de te dire en plein mon impression.—Je ne le crois pas. Très certainement tu avais déjà le sentiment de certaines lacunes et si je m'étais déclaré satisfait sans réserve peut-être eusses-tu poursuivi et achevé ton livre, sans y rien changer jusqu'au moment de la révision, où tu n'aurais pas manqué cette fois d'ouvrir les yeux.

Even at the very end, when the novel was completed and George Sand had made known to Fromentin her now celebrated comments, it was du Mesnil who finally gave the go-ahead signal for publication, despite the fact that few substantial changes had been made in the version as published in the Revue des Deux Mondes. Thus, at no stage in the evolution of Dominique did du Mesnil lose contact with the author: from the composition of the opening chapters following on the invitation of François Buloz in 1859, through the period when Fromentin intermitted his work on the novel, to the resumption of activities during the summer of 1861 in Fontainebleau and the final emergence of the text in the last frantic ‘deux mois’ prior to its appearance in the Revue des Deux Mondes. Ultimately, the judgment of du Mesnil overrode that of George Sand, and the work was finally published in book form by Hachette in 1863.

In the light of these events, the close thematic similarity between Valdieu and Dominique takes on a particular significance.¹¹ The hero, Maurice Davesne, finds himself in an analogous situation to that of the hero in Fromentin's novel, in the sense that he, too, is the victim of an impossible love for a married woman, in this case, Julie de Neuillan:

Elle m'aime, elle m'aime uniquement; mais elle porte un autre nom que le mien, et cette pensée la poursuit et nous tue.

(v., 52)

Maurice, like Dominique, is haunted by the thought of this impossible love, telling himself: ‘Elle est mariée!’ (v., 49), with its echoes in Dominique's anguished realization: ‘J'aime une femme mariée!’ (d., 120).

In the case of du Mesnil's novel, the narration mostly takes the form of letters exchanged between Maurice and Julie de Neuillan, and between Maurice and Albert de Beauve, his confidant. This latter might most fittingly be described as occupying a rôle intermediate between that of Augustin and Olivier in Fromentin's novel: he urges his friend not to ask for the moon (v., 61) in terms which recall the advice of Dominique's tutor, and at the same time he appears to suffer from the disillusionment and ‘spleen’ (v., 85) so frequently associated with Olivier.

The situation of Julie de Neuillan is, moreover, close to that of Madeleine de Nièvres. Her relationship with her husband, also many years older than she is, evokes some clear analogies, although Julie de Neuillan has the consolation of having a child where Fromentin denied Madeleine this privilege. M. de Neuillan, a widely respected man, is engaged on a diplomatic career which involves him in long journeys away from home, though the growing unrest in his reactions towards Maurice eventually leads him to renounce this position and continue with his work on writing a history of Prussia. Like M. de Nièvres, he too has definite limitations in character, with his ‘prétention de ne se tromper jamais et de juger les hommes à première vue’ (v., 41).

Even the events leading up to this impossible love are not without similarities in Fromentin's treatment of the same theme. Dominique is largely brought up by his aunt and his tutor; Maurice spends the formative part of his life with his aunt and uncle, to whose property at Valdieu he eventually retires. Even after being in Paris for some time, Maurice describes his adolescence as an ‘état de candeur parfaite’ (v., 24), making the transformation to manhood so sudden that, in the account of how he passed ‘brusquement de la quiétude la plus profonde au trouble le plus absolu’ (v., 25), one is again reminded of Dominique's similar ‘enjambée exorbitante’ (d., 93). Linked with this experience is a tentative and mysterious awareness of a sense of the ideal, ‘ce pressentiment singulier, cette attente obstinée’ (v., 25-6) which engenders in the hero a potential receptivity to a highly subjective and idealized love, long before these feelings have ‘crystallized’ in relation to any one person. This mood, suggested with infinitely greater mastery by Fromentin in connection with the burgeoning of springtime and adolescence, is nevertheless present in Valdieu where the hapless love of a despairing couple inspires Maurice to formulate his love for a woman as yet unknown to him and who will materialize later as Julie de Neuillan:

Je ne devais te connaître que plus tard, trop tard, hélas! mais j'eus alors comme un pressentiment de ta tendresse, et, prenant à témoin le ciel de printemps et tout ce que j'aimais, j'adressai de mes deux mains tremblantes à mon amie inconnue un baiser brûlant, un baiser de jeunesse.

(v., 32-3)

Again, like Dominique, Maurice finds in fashionable society life only ‘des protestations et des fourberies banales’ (v., 26), serving eventually to highlight the pure and dream-like quality of his ideal love. As is so frequently the case in the tradition of the personal novel, this ideal love depends for a vital part of its existence on the very fact that it represents the unachievable, the inaccessible, the quality which Maurice falteringly describes as ‘quelque chose … qu'aucun effort ne pouvait atteindre, aucun embrassement retenir’ (v., 37).

The development of this ideal love involves many situations thematically similar to those in Dominique. Like Fromentin's hero, Maurice watches the woman whom he loves at the theatre, though in this case accompanied by her husband:

Pour moi, je n'ai rien entendu, rien vu, rien que cette loge où, comme dans un cadre étroit, se résumait un drame bien autrement réel et poignant, celui de ma propre vie.

(v., 48)

Again, Maurice, like Dominique, imagines that he would like to bring about ‘une explication très franche’ (v., 53), while at the same time subconsciously aware that this would merely shatter the dream of his love. Both heroes shrink from any lines of demarcation which would falsify and distort the gossamer-like world in which their ideal love flourishes; both, symbolically perhaps, hesitate before the apparently insuperable barrier of the door to the heroine's room (v., 46; d., 265). Similarly, the mood of exaltation which this love can inspire in Maurice is not too unlike the mood of Dominique on his return home by night, thrilled by the awareness of Madeleine's love and jealousy (d., 240-1):

Après t'avoir dit adieu, j'ai marché sans avoir conscience du chemin que je suivais; j'aurais souhaité, pour les affronter, des monts inaccessibles, des abîmes; j'aurais accepté la mort sans peur; que vas-tu dire si j'ajoute: sans regret? Je n'étais donc pas heureux? J'étais ravi.

(v., 59)

Indeed, all these links of fraternity between Maurice and Dominique seem almost to be symbolized by the awareness, expressed by both heroes, of the fact that countless others before them have been through these same experiences which appear to them at the time to be so unique and individual (v., 43-5; d., 74).

Most striking of all, however, in the enumeration of analogies existing between Valdieu and Dominique is the fact that, in both novels, the love reaches a climax in an idyllic interlude. In Valdieu, a holiday is arranged at Les Étangs, the very name of which suggests Les Trembles. During this period, as in Dominique, the hero comes closest to the zenith of his happiness, writing to his friend in the following terms:

En un mot, je suis heureux, mon ami, heureux comme on ne l'est guère, comme je ne l'ai jamais été, et quoi qu'il arrive désormais, ne me plaignez pas.

(v., 100)

In both novels, the hero experiences the enchantment of his love, set against the backcloth of his own youthful environment. In view of the significance of this correlation in Dominique, it is particularly interesting to find that the holiday at Les Étangs also takes Maurice back to his native countryside and that he attaches the same importance as Dominique to the joy of introducing the woman of his dreams to the places which he knew and loved so well. On this point, Maurice expresses himself clearly in a letter to his confidant:

Vous n'avez pas oublié, sans doute, que je suis un peu de ce pays. J'avais laissé çà et là, le long des sentiers, au bord des eaux courantes, sous ces toits rustiques, des souvenirs contemporains de ma première jeunesse …

(v., 102)

During this time, Julie de Neuillan, like Madeleine de Nièvres, takes a considerable interest in the career of her lover and does her best to encourage him (v., 126; d., 185). Indeed, the thematic similarity between Valdieu and Dominique even runs to an analogous meeting with an old shepherd, Jacques (v., 126; d., 23-5) …

Finally, although du Mesnil's novel contains nothing of the pre-Proustian qualities of affective memory so vital in Dominique, there is nevertheless an interesting tendency to associate experiences not so much with the factual memories surrounding them as with the concomitant physical sense-impressions. Thus, during the absence of Julie de Neuillan, her memory is evoked in terms of the peripheral physical sensations linked with her presence, in a way which heralds the brilliant resuscitation of Madeleine in the mind of the adolescent Dominique:

C'était, je crois, au commencement de juin, peut-être vers la fin de mai; la seule impression hors de nous qui me reste présente, c'est que les arbres de ton jardin étaient verts et qu'il faisait chaud. Un demi-jour, rendu très-doux par le voisinage des feuillages, la moite ardeur d'un vent de printemps remplissaient ta chambre où nous étions seuls, assis sur ce petit meuble que je vois encore, et, d'un air distrait, tu effilais un reste de ruban.

(v., 35-6)

Despite these numerous analogies in theme and treatment, there are, however, some important differences between the two novels. In du Mesnil's novel, by contrast with that of Fromentin, the heroine dies, and in very typically Romantic circumstances, as a result of an accident when meeting her lover after a relatively long absence. Maurice then retires to Valdieu, the ancestral home of his uncle whose fatal illness broke short the dream holiday at Les Étangs. At Valdieu, Maurice allegedly lives a life of regrets, expiating the fault brought about by his own weakness of character. Despite certain obvious similarities in situation, Valdieu ends on quite a different note from Dominique:

Intelligent, doué d'une certaine droiture naturelle, mais sans forces suffisantes contre les entraînements de son coeur, incapable d'en gouverner les élans, fragile autant qu'on peut l'étre avec une conscience que les passions avaient toujours maîtrisée, en un mot, sans caractère, M. Davesne se sert encore aujourd'hui peut-être de la seule énergie qu'il ait jamais eue pour s'obstiner dans des regrets devenus son châtiment.

(v., 225-6)

Perhaps the first to point out the affinity between Valdieu and Dominique was the acute and sensitive critic, Edmond Schérer. Schérer was known personally to both du Mesnil and Fromentin, and it was to him that Madame Fromentin consigned the manuscript of Les Maîtres d'autrefois, now in the Bibliothèque municipale de Versailles, after the death of her husband. In Monsieur Dahl's manuscript collection, an unpublished letter to du Mesnil, dated: Versailles, 11 mai [18]75, shows Schérer speaking of the way in which Valdieu was linked in his mind with Fromentin's novel:

J'ai été plus d'une fois surpris d'une certaine parenté entre votre manière et celle de Fromentin dans Dominique. Fromentin est bien plus peintre que vous, il a plus de variétés; il n'analyse pas plus finement ni plus juste, et rend peut-être moins bien la confusion des sentiments d'une âme troublée par un grand amour condamné en rupture.

These remarks are followed by some observations on the dénouement of Valdieu, which are of interest not merely on their own account but also for the extent to which they reveal a certain similarity in the problems besetting both authors. Schérer questions the validity of the final outcome of Valdieu, where Maurice Davesne, as shown in the last paragraph to be quoted from that novel, is intended to be thought of as expiating his past errors ‘dans des regrets devenus son châtiment’:

La seule chose que je n'aime pas tout à fait, c'est la dernière page. Le mot de châtiments est de trop. Le livre n'était pas du tout prêcheur, et ce mot y coud une sorte de moralité qui est de trop. Je crois, moi, ou que Maurice a eu d'autres maîtresses, ou qu'il s'est marié et a fait un bon père de famille, ou, si vous le voulez absolument, qu'il a vécu solitaire, inutile, frappé par la vie, mais trouvant alors la purification de son amour dans la fidélité même qu'il lui gardait.

This criticism by Schérer, also lightly touched upon by George Sand in an unpublished letter to Buloz,¹² points to one of the major defects in Valdieu: a certain lack of psychological complexity in the novel as a whole and a conclusion which is not altogether convincing. In this respect, as in many others, the comparison with Dominique serves to highlight the success of Fromentin where du Mesnil failed. However, quite a few admirers of Fromentin may feel that something of Schérer's criticism in relation to Valdieu might perhaps be applied, mutatis mutandis, to the conclusion of Dominique, where, in the view of many, Fromentin's work falls just short of true greatness. There is, nevertheless, an important distinction to be made in this respect. Whereas the novel of du Mesnil is open to criticism on the grounds of being unconvincing and insufficiently complex, the case against Fromentin is more subtle and reflects his greater stature as a writer. After all, if Dominique leaves many readers with the uneasy impression that ‘quelque chose manque à ce livre pour prendre place au premier rang’,¹³ it is not so much that the conclusion is unconvincing, but that it is incomplete. The dénouement is conducive to a vague feeling of uncertainty, a niggling awareness that something has been left unsaid which might have made this work an uncontested masterpiece. The theme of the hero's non-genius, for instance, might perhaps have been more fully characterized at the conscious level in relation to his ultimate decision of withdrawing to Les Trembles or again, it is often felt that Madeleine's feelings have been unduly left out of account in the dénouement. Indeed, the element of incompleteness which lies at the root of these and other analogous criticisms has given rise to a wide range of differing interpretations in relation to Dominique, pointing to a certain failure fully to develop the many elements of potential complexity which the novel contains. One of the principal values in comparing the work with Valdieu may, however, be to set such criticisms in a different perspective, and to suggest that one cannot altogether rule out the possibility that Fromentin, in his determination not to give the novel a Romantically dramatic or heroic ending, may have borne in mind the experience of du Mesnil in coping with a similar situation.

The author of Valdieu had no illusions as to its mediocrity. Indeed, in a copy of the novel at present in the possession of Monsieur Dahl, and which du Mesnil originally intended for his son Louis, he has written some remarks of his own about the publication of the work. He concludes with an observation of such extreme self-denigration that one is almost reminded of Dominique's attitude towards the literary ventures of his youth:

Dès l'abord je ne m'y suis pas trompé:—aucune originalité, fable banale; pas trace de souffle. C'est agréable, médiocre, sans portée en aucun sens.

Du Mesnil was here being over-modest, but the essence of his harsh self-appraisal is valid. Valdieu will never, however, vanish from human memory since it displays an almost unique affinity with Dominique and appeared at such a crucial stage in the evolution of Fromentin's literary development. Partly, perhaps, because the two men were frequently in daily contact at this time, there is little written evidence of any discussions which they may have had on this subject. But the fact that du Mesnil was fresh from his experiences in the domain of the personal novel must undoubtedly have made him all the more sympathetic to the problems facing Fromentin in the composition of Dominique and still more aware of the extent to which, on the whole, he surmounted them so masterfully. Indeed, if du Mesnil was the one who guided Fromentin the most, he also deserves the credit for having been the first fully to see that the real genius of his friend lay in the realm of suggestive art. Though he himself was not capable of putting into practice the precepts which he gave to Fromentin, he had the perspicacity to see in what direction to make his exhortations. ‘Vis, respire, fais vivre, fais respirer’,¹⁴ he urged Fromentin. That this was fulfilled, beyond anything that du Mesnil could have imagined, is shown by the incontestable success with which the tiniest physical sense-impressions are registered in Dominique, both for themselves and for the wider impressions to which they can give rise. Art for Fromentin, as for Baudelaire and certain other nineteenth-century writers, was a voyage of exploration, in which the artist discovers new and unsuspected connections between the various external manifestations of nature and the subjective impressions which they can produce. ‘Créer serait découvrir et signaler ce qui existe, mais est ignoré:’¹⁵ this definition appears in Fromentin's notes on Realism, written in Amsterdam in July 1876. In September 1874, du Mesnil had made a similar observation in an unpublished letter to Fromentin, in which he shows a profound awareness of his friend's achievement:

… tu as cela de commun avec tous les hommes d'imagination—le réel est pour eux un prétexte, il peut transparaître à travers leurs oeuvres, il en formera le fond nécessaire; mais ils se l'assimileront de telle manière pour nous le rendre ensuite sous forme de tableaux ou de livres, ils s'y mêleront si intimement que l'objet primitif de leur étude transformée gagnera en puissance en élévation en émotion ce qu'il aura perdu en vérité nue.¹⁶

The letter from Schérer in relation to Valdieu concludes with the following remark to du Mesnil:

Je vais faire relier votre livre et le placer, dans ma bibliothèque, à côté de Dominique.

No more appropriate position could be found for these two works in any bookcase, forming a silent tribute to this life-long friendship and communion of ideas.

Notes

1. Fromentin, too, has suffered his share in this respect, as witness the ‘querelle’ started in the Revue bleue of 1909 by Georges Pailhès and continued, despite the sane counsel of Pierre Blanchon, by Samuel A. Rhodes in the Publications of the Modern Language Association, September 1930.

2. Revue Européenne (Recueil littéraire, politique, scientifique et philosophique), 15 August, 1 September, 15 September 1859.

3. Eugène Fromentin. Correspondance et Fragments inédits. Biographie et notes par Pierre Blanchon. (Paris, 1912), p. 129.

4. Eugène Fromentin. Lettres de Jeunesse. Biographie et notes par Pierre Blanchon. (Paris, 1909); Correspondance, op. cit.

5. The phrase is that of Fromentin, and appears in an unpublished extract from one of his letters to du Mesnil. The letter has been published in part, Lettres de Jeunesse, pp. 159-60.

6. Extract from an unpublished and undated letter, written (probably in 1862) by du Mesnil to Fromentin.

7. Extract from an unpublished and undated letter written by du Mesnil to Fromentin.

8. See Lettres de Jeunesse, op. cit., p. 159.

9. Extract from an unpublished and undated letter by du Mesnil to Fromentin. From internal evidence, it is possible to date the letter as having been written in July 1861.

10. An affectionate reference to Fromentin's wife.

11. For the purposes of detailed comparison, references here made to Valdieu will be to the Dentu edition of 1860 and will be designated by v.; references to Dominique will be to the 1955 edition by Émile Henriot in the Garnier collection and will be designated by d.

12. ‘Est-ce que j'accepte les excès des châtiments? Non, mais si l'on me demande si cela vaut Juvénal, je crois que oui. On m'a raconté que l'empereur avait lu cela et dit tranquillement: C'est très beau. Si l'empereur a dit cela c'est un grand critique, demandez-lui des articles pour la revue.’ Extract from an unpublished letter, dated 8 mai [18]64. [In the original publication of this article, the reference to ‘châtiments’, in George Sand's letter to François Buloz of 8 May 1864, was erroneously related to Du Mesnil's novel, Valdieu. It, in fact, relates to Victor Hugo's Les Châtiments (B.W.).]

13. René Bazin: Un peintre écrivain: Fromentin, in Questions littéraires et sociales (Paris, 1906), p. 31.

14. Correspondence, op. cit., p. 83, n. 1.

15. Ibid., p. 391.

16. Extract from an unpublished and undated letter, the envelope of which, however, bears the date of 4 September 1874.