The Project Gutenberg EBook of Three short works, by Gustave Flaubert

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Title: Three short works
The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul.

Author: Gustave Flaubert

Release Date: December 14, 2003 [EBook #10458]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO Latin-1

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THREE SHORT WORKS

by

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

The Dance of Death
The Legend of Saint-Julian the Hospitaller
A Simple Soul

THE DANCE OF DEATH

_(1838)_

* * * * *

"Many words for few things!"
"Death ends all; judgment comes to all."

* * * * *

[This work may be called a prose poem. It is impregnated with the
spirit of romanticism, which at the time of writing had a
temporary but powerful hold on the mind of Gustave Flaubert.]

* * * * *

DEATH SPEAKS

At night, in winter, when the snow-flakes fall slowly from heaven
like great white tears, I raise my voice; its resonance thrills
the cypress trees and makes them bud anew.

I pause an instant in my swift course over earth; throw myself
down among cold tombs; and, while dark-plumaged birds rise
suddenly in terror from my side, while the dead slumber
peacefully, while cypress branches droop low o'er my head, while
all around me weeps or lies in deep repose, my burning eyes rest
on the great white clouds, gigantic winding-sheets, unrolling
their slow length across the face of heaven.

How many nights, and years, and ages have I journeyed thus! A
witness of the universal birth and of a like decay; Innumerable
are the generations I have garnered with my scythe. Like God, I am
eternal! The nurse of Earth, I cradle it each night upon a bed
both soft and warm. The same recurring feasts; the same unending
toil! Each morning I depart, each evening I return, bearing within
my mantle's ample folds all that my scythe has gathered. And then
I scatter them to the four winds of Heaven!

* * * * *

When the high bil