For Flaubert, the nineteenth century was 'l'Hénaurme siècle'. This distortion of the epithet énorme admirably conveys not only his ironical attitude towards the misplaced self-confidence and pretension of the age, but also his frank enjoyment of the grotesque figures who, for him, embodied these quintessentially bourgeois characteristics. As the novelist Milan Kundera would later put it, with only minimal recourse to hyperbole: 'Flaubert discovered stupidity. I dare say that is the greatest discovery of a century so proud of its scientific thought.' In Flaubert's eyes, bêtise ['stupidity'] contaminated even the highest reaches of intellectual endeavour. Writing to George Sand after reading Lamennais's Essai sur l'indifférence en matière de religion, he boasted: 'I am now thoroughly acquainted with all those monumental jokers who have had such a calamitous influence on the nineteenth century' ['Je connais maintenant, et ê fond, tous ces immenses farceurs, qui ont eu sur le 19e siècle une influence désastreuse' (Cor. iv 758)].