But this Flaubert business must be resisted
in the premises. Or is it the result of iffluenza God forbid. Fanny is
down now, and the last link that bound me to my fellow men is severed. I
sit up here, and write, and read Renan's _Origines_, which is certainly
devilish interesting; I read his Nero yesterday, it is very good, O,
very good! But he is quite a Michelet; the general views, and such a
piece of character painting, excellent; but his method sheer lunacy. You
can see him take up the block which he had just rejected, and make of it
the corner-stone: a maddening way to deal with authorities; and the
result so little like history that one almost blames oneself for wasting
time. But the time is not wasted; the conspectus is always good, and the
blur that remains on the mind is probably just enough. I have been
enchanted with the unveiling of Revelations. Grigsby! what a lark! And
how picturesque that return of the false Nero! The Apostle John is
rather discredited. And to think how one had read the thing so often,
and never understood the attacks upon St. Paul! I remember when I was a
child, and we came to the Four Beasts that were all over eyes, the
sickening terror with which I was filled. If that was Heaven, what, in
the name of Davy Jones and the aboriginal night-mare, could Hell be?
Take it for all in all, _L'Antechrist_ is worth reading. The _Histoire
d' Israel_ did not surprise me much; I had read those Hebrew sources
with more intelligence than the New Testament, and was quite prepared to
admire Ahab and Jezebel, etc. Indeed, Ahab has always been rather a hero
of mine; I mean since the years of discretion.

_May 21st._--And here I am back again on p. 85! the last chapter
demanding an entire revision, which accordingly it is to get. And where
my mail is to come in, God knows! This forced, violent, alembicated
style is most abhorrent to me; it can't be helped; the note was struck
years ago on the _Janet Nicoll_, and has to be maintained somehow; and
I can only hope the intrinsic horror and pathos, and a kind of fierce
glow of colour there is to it, and the surely remarkable wealth of
striking incident, may guide our little shallop into port. If Gordon
Browne is to get it, he should see the Brassey photographs of Papeete.
But mind, the three waifs were never in the town; only on the beach and
in the calaboose. By George, but it's a good thing to illustrate for a
man like that! Fanny is all right again. False ala