little, if at all,
inferior to that which prevails in the very greatest masters of pure
story-telling.

[Sidenote: _Salammbo._]

Hardly any one, speaking critically, could, I suppose, also speak thus
positively about Flaubert's second book, _Salammbo_--a romance of
Carthaginian history at the time of the Mutiny of the Mercenaries. Even
Sainte-Beuve--no weak-stomached reader--was put off by its blotches of
blood and grime, and by the sort of ghastly gorgeousness which, if it
does not "relieve" these, forms a kind of background to throw them up.
It was violently attacked by clever carpers like M. de Pontmartin, by
eccentrics of half-genius and whole prejudice like M. Barbey
d'Aurevilly, and by dull pedants like M. Saint-Rene Taillandier; while
it may be questioned whether, to the present day, its friends have not
mostly belonged to that "Save-me-from-them" class which simply extols
the "unpleasant" because other people find it unpleasant.[396] For my
own part, I did not enjoy it much at the very first; but I felt its
power at once, and, as always happens in such cases when admiration does
not come from the tainted source just glanced at, the enjoyment
increased, and the sense of power increased with it, the
"unpleasantness," as a known thing, becoming merely "discountable" and
disinfected. The book can, of course, never rank with _Madame Bovary_,
because it is a _tour de force_ of abnormality--a thing incompatible
with that highest art which consists in the transformation and
transcendentalising of the ordinary. The leprosies, and the
crucifixions, and the sorceries, and the rest of it are ugly; but then
Carthage _was_ ugly, as far as we know anything about it.[397] Salammbo
herself is shadowy; but how could a Carthaginian girl be anything else?
The point to consider is the way in which all this unfamiliar, uncanny,
unpleasant stuff is _fused_ by sheer power of art into something which
has at least the reality of a bad dream--which, as most people know, is
a very real thing indeed while it lasts, and for a little time after. It
increases the wonder--though to me it does not increase the interest--to
know that Flaubert took the most gigantic pains to make his task as
difficult as possible by acquiring and piecing together the available
knowledge on his subject. This process--the ostensible _sine qua non_ of
"Realism" and "Naturalism"--will require further treatment. It is almost
enough for the present to say that, though