The wall was clean, save for a patch of subfenestral graffiti.

There was no answer from the bogatyr. Ilya shouted even louder than before, Louder than before, in a shrill voice— There was no answer from the bogatyr.

The setting was the youth league baseball try-outs in the small town of Boland, New Hampshire. Also in attendance at the try-outs was John Harding, a hometown hero who, together with his wife, Sally, and their soon-to-be 8-year-old son, Rick, had only recently returned to Boland to settle down and begin John's tenure as the President and CEO of Millennium International, one of the largest computer companies in the country.

How is it, then, that Flaubert was a somber impressionist avant la lettre, when the school of painters was remarkably cheerful with the exception of both Degas and Van Gogh?