 He did however make occasional visits to Paris and England, where he apparently had a mistress.Politically, Flaubert described himself as a "romantic and liberal old dunce" ("vieille ganache romantique et libérale"), an "enraged liberal" ("libéral enragé"), a hater of all despotism, and someone who celebrated every protest of the individual against power and monopolies.With his lifelong friend Maxime Du Camp, he travelled in Brittany in 1846.