The first Education sentimentale begins and ends with temporal anomalies: the ‘date of completion’ affixed to the end is impossible both in terms of what is known of the historical circumstances of composition and in terms of the internal chronology of the story. In addition, many of the clues and constraints through which a chronology of the first half of the novel can be constructed are presented in a delayed position in the text, long after the events to which they refer, so that the prospective/retrospective aspect of the reader's activity is always to the fore.

Bruneau (C1, 988) claims that additions were made to ES1 between August 1846 and Louise Colet's reading of it shortly before her ‘Memento du 15 janvier 1852’ (C11, 883). The ages of Jules and Henry towards the end give 1848, and Flaubert was in the habit of bringing novels to a present-tense perspective, as the endings of Novembre, MB and ES11 show. It is most probable, therefore, that ES1 was completed towards the end of 1851 and after Flaubert began work on MB, a point signalled through the copy of Notre-Dame de Paris inscribed with the name ‘Emilie’ in ES1 (1, 340).

Why, then, does the date ‘Nuit du 7 janvier 1845, une heure du matin’ (1, 373) appear after the theatrical ending of ES1 as the final message of this polymorphous text?