Lettre autographe signée adressée à l'archéologue Charles-Ernest Beulé

Autograph letter signed by Gustave Flaubert addressed to the archaeologist Charles-Ernest Beulé. Two pages written in black ink on a folded sheet. The recipient of this letter added nine handwritten lines, a draft of his future response, following Flaubert's letter.
This letter has been transcribed and reproduced on the website of the Flaubert Centre at the University of Rouen. The transcriber of this missive notes: "Are the lines written under the signature by Beulé or by Flaubert himself? The handwriting resembles his. Stéphanie Dord-Crouslé suggests that Flaubert may have gone to see Beulé and written these elements under his dictation in response to the questions posed." This hypothesis seems unlikely to us given that we know Charles-Ernest Beulé's response to this letter, itself digitized by the Flaubert Centre and dated February 10, 1860. This response does not seem to us to suggest a visit by Flaubert to Beulé. It seems more likely to us that Beulé inscribed under Flaubert's letter a draft of his future response of February 10, 1860, which would only be an elegant reformulation of his notes.
Handsome and important testimony to the colossal research that Flaubert undertook for the writing of Salammbô.
"Begun in 1857, the novel appeared in 1862, a period when Antiquity was coming back into fashion and when Carthage was 'au goût du jour' ["in vogue"] thanks to the recent excavations by Charles-Etienne Beulé at Byrsa (1859) and in the Punic ports." (Vanessa Padioleau, "Flaubert et Carthage : Salammbô, roman polymorphe" ["Flaubert and Carthage: Salammbô, polymorphic novel"] in Revue Flaubert, n° 9, 2009) It is therefore to one of the specialists on the subject that Flaubert addresses his questions, commenting on his recent reading of Ammianus Marcellinus: "J'ai appris, dans ce même Ammien, que les Carthaginois ont pris Thèbes, en Egypte [...] Qu'est-ce que cela veut dire ? Ce passage est, je crois, peu connu ?" ["I learned, in this same Ammianus, that the Carthaginians took Thebes, in Egypt [...] What does this mean? This passage is, I believe, little known?"] Flaubert's task is no small one: at the time, nothing or almost nothing was known about the period of the Mercenary Revolt which extended over two years, from 240 to 238 BC. He then begins painstaking work, basing his research on the texts of the great historians of Antiquity which he reads in Latin in the original. The letter we offer shows his great mastery of it: "J'ai appris, dans ce même Ammien que les Carthaginois ont pris Thèbes, en Egypte, livr[e] xvii, ch. iv. 'Hanc inter exordia pandentis se late Carthaginis, improviso excursu duces oppressere Poenorum'" ["I learned, in this same Ammianus that the Carthaginians took Thebes, in Egypt, book xvii, ch. iv. 'At the time when Carthage was beginning its wide expansion, the generals of the Phoenicians conquered it by a surprise attack'"].
Despite this most thorough research, the gate of Carthage would receive only a very brief description in the final version of Salammbô.