XVIII
THE TUNE OF TIME
Ferval returned to Rouen after a fatiguing trip down the Seine as far as
Croisset, the old home of Gustave Flaubert. Here he viewed, not without
a dismal sense of fame and its futility, the little garden-house in
which the masterpieces of the great Frenchman had been conceived in joy
and executed in sorrow. He met the faithful Colange, one-time attendant
of Flaubert, and from him learned exacerbating details of the novelist's
lonesome years; so he was in a mood of irritation as he went ashore near
the Boieldieu Bridge and slowly paced toward his hotel. He loved this
Norman Rouen, loved the battered splendour of Notre-Dame Cathedral,
loved the church of Saint-Ouen--that miracle of the Gothic, with its
upspringing turrets, its portal as perfect as a Bach fugue. And in the
Solferino Garden he paid his tribute of flowers at the monuments of
Maupassant and Flaubert. Ferval was modern in his tastes; he believed
nothing in art was worth the while which did not date from the
nineteenth century.
Deplorably bored, he passed his hotel on the Quai and turned into the
Rue Jeanne d'Arc, which led by the facade of the Palais de Justice.
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