The project publishes on line a complex patrimonial set (combining manuscripts, printed and mixed materials) of high scientific and cultural significance: the documentation files (now kept at the Rouen library) that Flaubert gathered to write his last novel. The online availability (through images and transcriptions) of a corpus that used to be very hard to access is accompanied by noteworthy scientific enrichments (search engine, metadata, annotations, and libraries). But its main asset is an original computing device producing configurable arrangements of quotations extracted from the published documents. Among other arrangements, web users can produce hypothetical reconstructions of Bouvard et Pécuchet’s second volume. Flaubert had partially planned this volume and started to gather material, but death prevented him from completing the work.