Well, so be it! We should have published the book with our notes and observation's; but now I ask you, gentlemen, if your first reading has left you in doubt, to give it a second reading. You will willingly do this, as you desire the truth; and you could not be among those who, when two lines of a man's writing is brought to them, are sure to make it fit any condition that may be. You do not wish a man to be judged upon a few cuttings more or less skilfully made. You would not allow that; you would not deprive him of the ordinary means of defense. Well, you have the book, and although it may be less easy than you might wish, you will make your own divisions, observations, and meanings, because you desire the truth, because truth is necessary for the basis of your judgment, and truth will come from a serious examination of the book.

However, I cannot stop here. The Public Minister has attacked the book, and it is necessary for me to defend it, to complete the quotations he has made, and show the nothingness of the accusation against each incriminated passage; that will be all my defense.

I shall not attempt, assuredly, to place myself in opposition to the exalted, animated, pathetic appreciation with which the Public Attorney has surrounded all that he said, by striving for appreciation of the same kind; the defense would have no right to make use of such a manner of procedure; it must content itself with citing the text, such as it is.

And in the first place, I declare that nothing is more false than what has just been said about lascivious colour. Lascivious colour! Where can you find it? My client has depicted in Madame Bovary what sort of woman? My God! it is sad to say, and yet it is true, a young girl, born, as they nearly all are, honest; at least the greater number are honest, but very fragile, when education, instead of fortifying them, softens them and turns them into bad paths. He has depicted a young girl. Is she of perverse nature? No, but of an impressionable nature, susceptible of exaltation.

The Government Attorney has said: "This young girl has constantly been presented in a lascivious light." No! she is represented as born in the country, born on a farm, where she is occupied with all her father's labor, and where no kind of lasciviousness can find a way to her mind or heart. Then she is represented, in the place of following the destiny which would be hers naturally, instead of being brought up for the farm or in some analogous place in which she ought to live, she is represented as under the short-sighted authority of a father who thinks he must have his daughter educated in a convent, this girl born on a farm, who should marry a farmer, or a man of the country. She is then taken to a convent, outside her sphere. As there is nothing that does not have weight in the Public Attorney's speech, we must leave nothing without a response. Ah! you spoke of her little sins, and in quoting from the first number, you said:

"When she went to confession, she invented little sins, in order that she might stay there longer, kneeling in the shadow ... beneath the whisperings of the priest." You have gravely deceived yourself in regard to my client's meaning. He has not committed the fault with which you reproach him; the error is wholly on your side, in the first place upon the age of the girl. As she entered the convent at thirteen, it is evident that she must have been fourteen when she went to confession. She was not then a child of ten years, as it has pleased you to say, and you were materially deceived on that point. But I am not so sure of the unlikelihood of a child of ten years liking to remain at the confessional "under the whisperings of the priest."

All that I desire is that you read the lines which precede, and that is not easy, I agree. And here appears the inconvenience of not having a pamphlet memoir at hand; with such an aid, we should not have to search through six volumes!

I have called your attention to this passage in order to recall it to Madame Bovary and her true character. Will you permit me to say, what seems to me very important, that M. Flaubert has fully comprehended this point and put it in bold relief. There is a kind of religion which is generally spoken of to young girls, which is the worst of all religion. There may be in this regard a difference of opinion. As for me, I declare clearly that I know nothing more beautiful, or useful, or necessary to sustain, not only women in the ways of life but men themselves, who sometimes have the most difficult trials to overcome, I know nothing so useful, so necessary, as the religious sentiment, but a serious religious sentiment, and permit me to add, severe.

I wish my children to believe in one God, not a God in the abstractness of pantheism, but in a Supreme Being with whom they have relationship, to whom they are accustomed to pray, and who at once awes and fortifies them. This thought, you see, it is your belief as well as mine, is our strength in evil days, is our strength against what we call the world; the refuge; or better still, the strength of the weak. It is this thought which gives women that stability which makes them resigned to a thousand little things in life, which makes them carry all their suffering to God, and ask of Him grace to fulfill their duty. That religion, gentlemen, is the Christian religion, and it is that which establishes a relationship between God and man. Christianity, in placing a sort of intermediary power between God and ourselves, renders God more accessible, and communication with Him easier. That the Mother of Him who has made Himself the Saviour should receive the prayers of women, cannot affect, so far as I can see, purity, religious sanctity, or religious sentiment itself. But here is where the change begins. In order to accommodate a religion to all natures, all sorts of petty, miserable, paltry things are introduced. The pomp of the ceremonies, instead of being a true pomp which lays hold on the soul, often degenerates into a commerce in relics, medals, of little saints and Virgins. To what, gentlemen, do the minds of children, curious, ardent, and tender, lend themselves, especially the minds of young girls? To all these enfeebled, attenuated, miserable images of the religious spirit. They then take upon themselves little religious duties to put in practice, little devotions of tenderness, of love, and in the place of having in their soul the sentiment of God, the sentiment of duty, they abandon themselves to reveries, to little devices, to little devotions. And then comes the poesy, and then comes, it is very necessary to say it, a thousand thoughts of charity, of tenderness, of mystic love, a thousand forms which deceive young girls and sensualize religion. These poor children, naturally credulous and weak, take to all this poesy and reverie instead of attaching themselves to something more reasonable and severe. Whence it happens that you have very many strong devotees among women who are not religious at all. And when the wind blows them from the path where they ought to walk, in place of finding strength to combat it, they find only a kind of sensuality which bewilders them.

Ah! you have accused me of having confounded the religious element with sensualism, in the picture of modern society! Accuse rather the society in the midst of which we live, but do not accuse the man who cries with Bossuet: "Awake and be on thy guard against peril!" And say to the fathers of families: Take care! These are not good customs for your daughters; there is in all these mixtures of mysticism something which sensualises religion; say that, and you will speak the truth. It is for this that you accuse Flaubert; it is for this that I exalt his conduct. Yes, he has given very good warning of the whole family of dangers arising from exaltation among young persons, who take upon themselves petty devotions instead of attaching themselves to a strong and severe religion which would sustain them in a day of weakness. And now you shall see whence comes the invention of the little sins "under the whisperings of the priest." Read page 30:

"She had read 'Paul and Virginia,' and she had dreamed of the little bamboo-house, the nigger Domingo, the dog Fidele, but above all the sweet friendship of some dear little brother, who seeks red fruit for you on trees taller than steeples, or who runs barefoot over the sand, bringing you a bird's nest."

Is this lascivious, gentlemen? Let us continue.



THE GOVERNMENT ATTORNEY:

I did not say that passage was lascivious.



M. SENARD:

I ask your pardon, but it is precisely in this passage that you found a lascivious phrase, and it was only by isolating it from what preceded and what followed that you could make it seem lascivious.

"Instead of attending to mass, she looked at the pious vignettes with their azure borders in her book, and she loved the sick lamb, the sacred heart pierced with sharp arrows, or the poor Jesus sinking beneath the cross he carries. She tried, by way of mortification, to eat nothing a whole day. She puzzled her head to find some vow to fulfill."

Do not forget this; when one invents little sins to confess and seeks some vow to fulfill, as you will find in the preceding line, evidently one has got ideas that are a little false from somewhere. And now I ask you if I have to discuss your passage! I continue:

"In the evening, before prayers, there was some religious reading in the study. On week-nights it was some abstract of sacred history or the Lectures of the Abbe Frayssinous, and on Sundays passages from the 'Genie du Christianism,' as a recreation. How she listened at first to the sonorous lamentations of its romantic melancholies re-echoing through the world and eternity! If her childhood had been spent in the shop-parlor of some business quarter, she might perhaps have opened her heart to those lyrical invasions of Nature, which usually come to us only through translation in books. But she knew the country too well; she knew the lowing of cattle, the milking, the plow. Accustomed to calm aspects of life, she turned, on the contrary, to those of excitement. She loved the sea only for the sake of its storms, and the green fields only when broken up by ruins. She wished to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desire of her heart, being of a temperament, more sentimental than artistic, looking for emotions not landscapes."

You shall see with what delicate precaution the author has introduced a saintly old maid, and how, with a purport of teaching religion, there is allowed to slip into the convent a new element, through the introduction of romance brought in by a stranger. Do not forget this when the subject of religious morals is under consideration.

"At the convent there was an old maid who came for a week each month to mend the linen. Patronized by the clergy, because she belonged to an ancient family of noblemen ruined by the Revolution, she dined in the refectory at the table of the good sisters, and after the meal had a bit of chat with them before going back to her work. The girls often slipped out from the study to go and see her. She knew by heart the love-songs of the last century, and sang them in a low voice as she stitched away. She told stories, gave them news, went errands in the town, and on the sly lent the big girls some novel, that she always carried in the pockets of her apron, and of which the good lady herself swallowed long chapters in the intervals of her work."

This is nothing but marvellous, speaking from a literary point of view, and absolution can but be granted a man who has written these admirable passages as a warning against all perils of education of this kind, as an indication to young women of the stumbling-blocks in the life in which they will be placed. Let us continue:

"They were all love, lovers, sweet-hearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions killed at every stage, horses ridden to death on every page, sombre forests, heartaches, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, 'gentlemen' brave as lions, gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed, and weeping like fountains. For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries. With Walter Scott, later, she fell in love with historical events, dreamed of old chests, guardrooms and minstrels. She would have liked to live in some old manor-house, like those long-waisted chatelaines who, in the shade of pointed arches, spent their days leaning on the stone, chin in hand, watching a cavalier with white plume galloping on his black horse from the distant fields. At this time, she had a cult for Mary Stuart and enthusiastic veneration for illustrious or unhappy women. Joan of Arc, Heloise, Agnes Sorel, the beautiful Ferronniere, and Clemence Isaure stood out to her like comets in the dark immensity of heaven, where also were seen, lost in shadow, and all unconnected, St. Louis with his oak, the dying Bayard, some cruelties of Louis XI., a little of St. Bartholomew's, the plume of the Bearnais, and always the remembrance of the plates painted in honor of Louis XIV.

"In the music-class, in the ballads she sang, there was nothing but little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagunes, gondoliers;—mild compositions that allowed her to catch a glimpse athwart the obscurity of style and the weakness of the music of the attractive phantasmagoria of sentimental realities."

Now, you have not remembered this, when that poor country girl, having returned to the farm and married a village physician, is invited to an evening party at the Castle, to which you have sought to call the attention of the judges to show that there was something lascivious in a waltz she took part in. You have not called to mind this education when this poor woman is charmed that an invitation comes to take her from her husband's common fireside and lead her to the Castle, where she sees fine gentlemen, beautiful ladies, and the old duke, who, they said, had had great fortune at Court! The Government Attorney has shown some fine emotions a propos of Queen Marie-Antoinette! Assuredly there is not one of us who would not share his thought; like him, we have trembled at the name of this victim of the Revolution, but it is not with Marie-Antoinette that we are concerned here, it is with the Castle Vaubyessard.

There was an old duke there who had had, they said, relations with the queen, and towards whom all eyes were turned. And when this young woman found herself thus transported into the midst of the world, thus realizing all the fantastic dreams of her youth, can you wonder at the intoxication of it? And you accuse her of being lascivious! Better accuse the waltz itself; that dance of our great modern balls where, said a late author writing about it, the woman "leans her head upon the shoulder of her partner whose limbs embrace her." You find Madame Bovary lascivious in Flaubert's description, but there is not a man, and I will not except you, who, having taken part in a ball like that and seen that sort of waltz, has not had in mind the wish that his wife or his daughter refrain from this pleasure which has in it so much of the untamed. If, counting upon the chastity which enveloped this young woman, we allow her sometimes to give herself up to this pleasure which the world sanctions, it is necessary to count very much upon that envelope of chastity and, however much one may count upon it, it is not unheard of to express the impressions which M. Flaubert has expressed in the name of morals and chastity.

Here she is at the Castle Vaubyessard, observed by the old duke, noticed favorably by all, and you cry out: What details! What does it mean? Details are everywhere, although we cite but a single passage.

"Madame Bovary noticed that many ladies had not put their gloves in their glasses.

"But at the upper end of the table, alone among all those women, bent over his full plate, with his napkin tied round his neck like a child, an old man sat eating, letting drops of gravy drip from his mouth. His eyes were bloodshot, and he wore a little queue tied with a black ribbon. He was the Marquis's father-in-law, the old Duke de Laverdiere, once on a time favorite of the Count d'Artois, in the days of the Vaudreuil hunting-parties at the Marquis de Conflans', and had been, it was said, the lover of Queen Mari-Antoinette between Monsieur de Coigny and Monsieur de Lauzun."

Defend the queen, defend her especially before the scaffold, say that because of her title she had the right of respect, but suppress your accusations when one contents himself with saying that he had been, it was said, the lover of the queen. Can that be so serious that you reproach us with having insulted the memory of that unfortunate woman?

"He had lived a life of noisy debauch, full of duels, bets, elopements; he had squandered his fortune and frightened all his family. A servant behind his chair named aloud to him in his ear the dishes that he pointed to, stammering, and constantly Emma's eyes turned involuntarily to this old man with hanging lips, as to something extraordinary. He had lived at court and slept in the bed of queens!

"Iced champagne was poured out. Emma shivered all over as she felt it cold in her mouth. She had never seen pomegranates nor tasted pine-apples."

You see that these descriptions are charming, incontestably, and that it is not difficult to take a line here and there for the purpose of creating a kind of colour, against which my conscience protests. It is not a lascivious colour, it is only lifelike; it is the literary element and at the same time the moral element.

Here we have a young girl, whose education you are acquainted with, become a woman. The Government Attorney has asked: Did she even try to love her husband? He has not read the book; if he had read it, he would not have made the objection.

We have, gentlemen, this poor woman dreaming at first. On page 34 you will find her dreams. And there is something more here, something of which the Government Attorney did not speak, and which I must tell you, and these are her impressions when her mother died; you will see if they are lascivious soon enough! Have the goodness to turn to page 33 and follow me:

"When her mother died she cried much the first few days. She had a funeral picture made with the hair of the deceased, and, in a letter sent to the Bertaux full of sad reflections on life, she asked to be buried some day in the same grave. The good man thought she must be ill, and came to see her. Emma was secretly pleased that she had reached at a first attempt the rare ideal of pale lives, never attained by mediocre hearts. She let herself glide along with Lamartine meanderings, listened to harps on lakes, to all the songs of dying swans, to the falling of the leaves, the pure virgins ascending to heaven, and the voice of the Eternal discoursing down the valleys. She wearied of it, would not confess it, continued from habit, and at last was surprised to feel herself soothed, and with no more sadness at heart than wrinkles on her brow."

I wish to make answer to the Government Attorney's reproach that she made no effort to love her husband.



THE GOVERNMENT ATTORNEY:

I did not reproach her for that, I said that she did not succeed in loving him.



M. SENARD:

If I have been mistaken, if you made no reproach, that is the best response that could be given. I believed that I understood you to make one; let us see how I may be deceived. Moreover, here is what I read at the end of page 36:

"And yet, in accord with theories she believed right, she desired to make herself in love with him. By moonlight in the garden she recited all the passionate rhymes she knew by heart, and, sighing, sang to him many melancholy adagios; but she found herself as calm after this as before, and Charles seemed no more amorous and no more moved.

"When she had thus for a while struck the flint on her heart without getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of understanding what she did not experience as of believing anything that did not present itself in conventional forms, she persuaded herself without difficulty that Charles's passion was nothing very exorbitant. His outbursts became regular; he embraced her at certain fixed times. It was one habit among other habits, and, like a dessert, looked forward to after the monotony of dinner."

On page 37 we find a group of similar things. Now, here is where the peril begins. You know how she has been brought up; and I beg you not to forget this for an instant.

There is not a man who, having read this, would not say that M. Flaubert is not only a great artist but a man of heart, for having in the last six pages turned all the horror and scorn upon the woman and all the interest towards the husband. He is a great artist, as has been said, because he has left the husband as he was, he has not transformed him, and to the end he is the same good man, commonplace, mediocre, full of the duties of his profession, loving his wife well, but destitute of education or elevation of thought. He is the same at the death-bed of his wife. And nevertheless, there is not an individual to whom the memory returns with more interest.

Why? Because he has kept to the end his simplicity and uprightness of heart; because to the end he has fulfilled his duty while his wife was led astray. His death is as beautiful and as touching as the death of his wife is hideous. On the dead body of the woman the author has shown the spots made by the vomiting of poison; they soil the white shroud in which she goes to her burial, and he has made her, as he desired, an object of disgust; but there is a man there who is sublime—the husband standing beside the grave. There is a man who is grand, sublime, whose death is admirable—the husband, who, finding himself broken-hearted by the death of his wife, sees afterwards all the illusions of the heart that remained to him embraced in the thought of his wife in the tomb. Keep that, I beg you, in your remembrance. The author has gone beyond what was necessary—as Lamartine has said—in rendering the death of the woman hideous and her punishment most terrible. The author has concentrated all the interest upon the man who did not deviate from the line of duty, who preserved his mediocre character, to be sure (for the author could not change his character) but who preserved also all his generosity of heart, while upon the wife who deceived him, ruined him, gave him into the hands of usurers, put into circulation forged notes and finally arrived at suicide, was heaped all the accumulated horrors. We shall see that it is natural—the death of this woman who, if she had not come to her end by poison, would have been broken by the excess of misfortune with which she was surrounded. The author has seen this. His book would not be read if he had done otherwise, if, in order to show where an education as perilous as that of Madame Bovary can lead, he had not been prodigal with the fascinating images and the powerful tableaux for which he is reproached.

M. Flaubert constantly sets forth the superiority of the husband over the wife, and what superiority, if you please? that of simple duty fulfilled, while the wife was straying from hers. Here she is, fixed by the bent of this bad education; here she is, gone out after the scene of the ball, with the young boy, Leon, as inexperienced as herself. She coquets with him but does not dare to go further; nothing happens. Then comes Rodolphe who takes the woman to himself. After looking at her for a moment, he said: This woman is all right. She will be easy prey, because she is light-minded and inexperienced. As to the fall, will you re-read pages 42, 43 and 44. I have only a word to say about this scene and that is: there are no details, no descriptions, no image that can trouble the senses; a single word indicates the fall: "She abandoned herself." I pray you to have the goodness to read again the details of the fall of Clarissa Harlowe, which I have not heard decried as a bad book. M. Flaubert has substituted Rodolphe for Lovelace, and Emma for Clarissa. If you will compare the two authors and the two books you will appreciate the situation.

But I will return here to the indignation of the Government Attorney. He is shocked that remorse does not immediately follow the fall, and that in the place of expressing bitterness, she said with satisfaction: "I have a lover!" But the author would not be true, if he made the enchanting draught seem bitter while it still touched the lips. He who wrote as the Attorney understands might be moral, but he would be saying what is not in nature. No, it is not at the first moment of a fault that the sentiment of fault is awakened; otherwise, it would not be committed. No, it is not at the moment when she is under a delusion that intoxicates her that a woman can be averted from this intoxication even by the immensity of the fault she has committed. She feels only the intoxication; she goes back to her home happy, sparkling, and singing in her heart: "I have a lover!" But can this last long? You have read pages 424 and 425. On both pages, and if you please, to page 428, the sentiment of disgust with her lover is not yet manifest; but she is already under the impression of fear and uneasiness. She thinks, weighs the question, and believes that she does not wish to abandon Rodolphe:

"Something stronger than herself forced her to him; so much so, that one day, seeing her come unexpectedly he frowned as one put out.

"'What is the matter with you?' she said, 'Are you ill? Tell me!'

"At last he declared with a serious air that her visits were becoming imprudent—that she was compromising herself.

"Gradually Rodolphe's fears took possession of her. At first, love had intoxicated her, and she had thought of nothing beyond. But now that he was indispensable to her life, she feared to lose anything of this, or even that it should be disturbed. When she came back from his house, she looked all about her, anxiously watching every form that passed in the horizon, and every village window from which she could be seen. She listened for steps, cries, the noise of the ploughs, and she stopped short, white, and trembling more than the aspen leaves swaying overhead."

You see unmistakably that she was not deceived; she felt clearly that there was something about it of which she had not dreamed. Let us take pages 433 and 434 and you will be still further convinced:

"When the night was rainy, they took refuge in the consulting-room, between the cart-shed and the stable. She lighted one of the kitchen candles that she had hidden behind the books. Rodolphe settled down there as if at home. The sight of the library, of the bureau, of the whole apartment, in fine, excited his merriment, and he could not refrain from making jokes about Charles which rather embarrassed Emma. She would have liked to see him more serious and even on occasions more dramatic; as, for example, when she thought she heard a noise of approaching steps in the alley.

"'Some one is coming!' she said

"He blew out the light.

"'Have you your pistols?'

"'Why?'

"'Why, to defend yourself,' replied Emma.

"'From your husband? Oh, poor devil!'"

And Rodolphe finished his phrase with a gesture which signified: I could crush him with a fillip.

She was amazed at his bravery, although she felt that there was a sort of indelicacy and naive grossness about it that was scandalizing.

"Rodolphe reflected a good deal on the affair of the pistols. If she had spoken seriously, it was very ridiculous, he thought, even odious; for he had no reason to hate the good Charles, not being what is called devoured by jealousy; and on this subject Emma had treated him to a lecture, which he did not think in the best taste.

"Besides, she was growing very sentimental. She had insisted on exchanging miniatures; they had cut handfuls of hair, and now she was asking for a ring—a real wedding-ring, in sign of an eternal union. She often spoke to him of the evening chimes, of the voices of nature. Then she talked to him of her mother—hers! and of his mother—his!

"Finally she wearied him."

Then, on page 453:

"He had no longer, as formerly, words so gentle that they made her cry, nor passionate caresses that made her mad; so that their great love, which engrossed her life, seemed to lessen beneath her like the water of a stream absorbed into its channel, and she could see the bed of it. She would not believe it; she redoubled in tenderness, and Rodolphe concealed his indifference less and less.

"She did not know whether she regretted yielding to him, or whether, she did not wish, on the contrary, to enjoy him the more. The humiliation of feeling herself weak was turning to rancour, tempered by their voluptuous pleasures. It was not affection; it was like a continual seduction. He subjugated her; she almost feared him."

And you are afraid, Mr. Government Attorney, that young women might read this! I am less frightened, less timid than you. On my own personal account, I can admirably understand a father of a family saying to his daughter: Young lady, if your heart, your conscience, if religious sentiment and the voice of duty are not sufficient to make you walk in the right path, look, my child, look well at the weariness, the suffering, the grief and desolation attending the woman who seeks happiness outside her home! This language would not wound you in the mouth of a father, would it? M. Flaubert has said nothing but this; he has made a painting most true, and most powerful, of what the woman who dreams of finding happiness outside her house immediately discovers.

But let us go on and we shall come to all the adventures of the disillusion. You show me the caresses of Leon on page 60. Alas! she will soon pay the ransom of adultery, and that ransom you will find terrible, in some pages farther on in the book you condemn. She sought happiness in adultery, poor unfortunate one! And she found, besides the disgust and fatigue that the monotony of marriage can bring to the woman who does not walk in the path of duty, the disillusion and the scorn of the man to whom she has given herself. Was any of this scorn lacking in the book? Oh, no! and you cannot deny it, for the book is under your eyes. Rodolphe, who has shown himself so vile, gives to her a last proof of egoism and cowardice. She has said to him: "Take me! Carry me away! I am stifling; I can no longer breathe in my husband's house, to which I have brought shame and misfortune." He hesitates; she insists. Finally, he promises, and the next day she receives a terrible letter under which she falls crushed and annihilated. She is taken ill and is dying. The number you are consulting shows you all the convulsions of a soul at war with itself, which perhaps could be led back to duty by an excess of suffering, but unfortunately she meets a boy with whom she had played when she was inexperienced. This is the movement of the romance, and then comes the expiation.

But the Government Attorney stops me and asks: Although it may be true that the purpose of the book is good from one end to the other, could you allow such obscene details as those that have been brought forward?

Very certainly I could not allow such details, but where have I allowed them? Where are they? I now arrive at the passages most condemned. I will say no more of the adventure in the cab. This Court has heard enough with regard to that; I come to the passages that you have pointed out as contrary to public morals and which form a certain number of pages in the December number. And, in order to pull away all the scaffolding of your accusation, there is only one thing to be done: to restore what precedes and what follows your quotations, in a word, to substitute the text complete as opposed to your cutting.

At the bottom of page 72, Leon, after making an agreement with Homais, the chemist, goes to the Hotel de Boulogne; the chemist goes there to find him.

"Emma was no longer there. She had just gone in a fit of anger. She detested him now. This failing to keep their rendezvous seemed to her an insult.

"Then, growing calmer, she at length discovered that she had no doubt calumniated him. But the disparaging of those we love always alienates us from them to some extent. We must not touch our idols; the gilt sticks to our fingers."

Great heavens! And it is for such lines as I have been reading to you that we are dragged before you. Listen now:

"They gradually came to talking more frequently of matters outside their love, and in the letters that Emma wrote him she spoke of flowers, verses, the moon and the stars, naive resources of a waning passion striving to keep itself alive by all external aids. She was constantly promising herself a profound felicity on her next journey. Then she confessed to herself that she felt nothing extraordinary. This disappointment quickly gave way to a new hope, and Emma returned to him more inflamed, more eager than ever. She undressed brutally, tearing off the thin laces of her corset that nestled around her hips like a gliding snake. She went on tip-toe, barefooted, to see once more that the door was closed; then, pale, serious, and without speaking, with one movement she threw herself upon his breast with a long shudder." You have stopped here, Mr. Attorney; permit me to continue:

"Yet there was upon that brow covered with cold drops, on those quivering lips, in those wild eyes, in the strain of those arms, something vague and dreary that seemed to Leon to glide between them subtly as if to separate them."

You call this lascivious colour, you say that this gives a taste for adultery, you say that these pages excite and arouse the senses,—that they are lascivious pages! But death is in these pages! You did not think of that, Mr. Attorney, and were simply frightened to find such words as corset, clothing which falls off, etc.; and you attach yourself to these three or four words, such as corset and falling clothing. Do you wish me to show you that corsets can appear in a classic book, a very classic book? I shall give myself the pleasure of so doing, presently.

"She undressed herself ..." [ah! Mr. Government Attorney, how badly you have understood this passage!] "she undressed hastily [poor thing], tearing off the thin laces of her corset that nestled around her hips like a gliding snake; then pale, serious, and without speaking, with one movement she threw herself upon his breast with a long shudder.... There was upon that brow covered with cold drops ... in the strain of those arms something vague and dreary...."

We must ask here where the lascivious colour is? and where is the severe colour? and ask if the senses of the young girl into whose hands this book might fall, could be aroused, excited—as she might by reading a classic of classics, which I shall cite presently, and which has been reprinted a thousand times without any prosecution, public or royal, following it. Is there anything analogous in what I am going to read you? Is there not, on the contrary, a horror of vice that this "something dreary glides in between them to separate them?" Let us continue, I pray:

"He did not dare to question her; but, seeing her so skilled, she must have passed, he thought, through every experience of suffering and of pleasure. What had once charmed now frightened him a little. Besides, he rebelled against his absorption, daily more marked by her personality. He begrudged Emma this constant victory. He even strove not to love her; then, when he heard the creaking of her boots, he turned coward, like drunkards at the sight of strong drinks."

What is lascivious there?

And then, take the last paragraph:

"One day, when they had parted early and she was returning alone along the boulevard, she saw the walls of her convent; then she sat down on a form in the shade of the elm-trees. How calm that time had been! How she longed for the ineffable sentiments of love that she had tried to figure to herself out of books! The first month of her marriage, her rides in the wood, the viscount that waltzed, and Lagardy singing, all repassed before her eyes. And Leon suddenly appeared to her as far off as the others.

"'Yet I love him,' she said to herself."

Do not forget this, Mr. Attorney, when you judge the thought of the author, when you wish to find absolutely lascivious colour where I can only find an excellent book.

"She was not happy—she never had been. Whence came this insufficiency of life—this instantaneous turning to decay of everything on which she leant?"

Is that lascivious?

"But if there were somewhere a being strong and beautiful, a valiant nature, full at once of exaltation and refinement, a poet's heart in angel's form, a lyre with sounding chords ringing out elegiac epithalamia to heaven, why, perchance, should she not find him? Ah! how impossible! Besides, nothing was worth the trouble of seeking it; everything was a lie. Every smile hid a yawn of boredom, every joy a curse, all pleasure satiety, and the sweetest kisses left upon your lips only the unattainable desire for a greater delight.

"A metallic clang droned through the air, and four strokes were heard from the convent-clock. Four o'clock! And it seemed to her that she had been there on that form an eternity. But an infinity of passions may be contained in a minute, like a crowd in a small space."

It is not necessary to look at the end of the book to find what is in it from one end to the other. I have read the incriminated passage without adding a word, to defend a work which defends itself through itself. Let us continue leading from this same incriminated passage, looking at it from a moral point of view:

"Madame was in her room, which no one entered. She stayed there all day long, torpid, half dressed, and from time to time burning Turkish pastilles which she had bought at Rouen in an Algerian's shop. In order not to have at night this sleeping man stretched at her side, by dint of manoeuvering, she at least succeeded in banishing him to the second floor, while she read till morning extravagant books, full of pictures of orgies and thrilling situations. Often, seized with fear, she cried out, and Charles hurried to her.

"'Oh, go away!' she would say.

"Or at other times, consumed more ardently than ever by that inner flame to which adultery added fuel, panting, tremulous, all desire, she threw open her window, breathed in the cold air, shook loose in the wind her masses of hair, too heavy, and gazing upon the stars, longed for some princely love. She thought of him, of Leon. She would then have given anything for a single one of those meetings that surfeited her.

"Those were her gala days. She wished them to be sumptuous, and when he alone could not pay the expenses, she made up the deficit liberally, which happened almost every time. He tried to make her understand that they would be quite as comfortable somewhere else, in a smaller hotel, but she always found some objection."

You see all this is very simple when one reads the whole; but in cuttings like those of the Government Attorney, the smallest word becomes a mountain.



THE GOVERNMENT ATTORNEY:

I did not quote any of those phrases last mentioned; but since you wish to quote what I have not incriminated, it would be well not to pass over the foot of the page adjoining page 50.



M. SENARD:

I pass over nothing, but I insist upon citing the incriminated passages in the quotations. We are quoting from pages 77 and 78.



THE GOVERNMENT ATTORNEY:

I refer to the quotations made to the audience, and thought you imputed me with having cited the lines you are about to read.



M. SENARD:

Mr. Attorney, I have quoted all the passages by whose aid you have attempted to constitute a misdemeanor—which accusation is now shattered. You developed before the audience what seemed to you convincing, and have had a fair opportunity. Happily we had the book and the defense knew the book; if he had not known it, his position, allow me to tell you, would have been very awkward. I am called upon to explain such and such passages to myself and to add others for the benefit of the audience. If I had not possessed the book, as I do, the defense had been difficult. Now, I can show you, through a faithful analysis of the romance, that far from being considered a lascivious work, it should be considered, on the contrary, eminently moral. After doing this, I took the passages that have been the motive for police correction, and after I followed the cuttings with what preceded and what succeeded, the accusation became so weak that you are in revolt the moment I have finished reading them! These same passages that you stamped as recriminating, I have used an equal right to quote myself, for the purpose of showing you the folly of the accusation.

I continue my quotation where I stopped at the bottom of page 78.

"He was bored now when Emma suddenly began to sob on his breast, and his heart, like the people who can only stand a certain amount of music, dozed to the sound of a love whose delicacies he no longer noted.

"They knew one another too well for any of those surprises of possession, that increase its joys a hundredfold. She was as sick of him as he was weary of her. Emma found again in adultery all the platitudes of marriage."

Platitudes of marriage! He who did the cutting here has said: Now, here is a man who says that in marriage there are only platitudes! It is an attack on marriage, it is an outrage to morals! You will agree, Mr. Attorney, that with cuttings artistically made, one can go far in the way of incriminating. What is it that the author called the platitudes of marriage? That monotony which Emma had dreaded, which she had wished to escape from but had found continually in adultery, which was precisely the disillusion. You now see clearly that when, in the place of cutting off the members of certain phrases and cutting out some words, we read what precedes and what follows, nothing remains for incrimination; and you can well comprehend that my client, who knew what he wished to say, must be a little in revolt at seeing it thus travestied. Let us continue:

"She was as sick of him as he was weary of her. Emma found again in adultery all the platitudes of marriage.

"But how to get rid of him? Then, though she might feel humiliated at the baseness of such enjoyment, she clung to it from habit or from corruption, and each day she hungered after them the more, exhausting all felicity in wishing for too much of it. She accused Leon of her baffled hopes, as if he had betrayed her; and she even longed for some catastrophe that would bring about their separation, since she had not the courage to make up her mind to it herself.

"She none the less went on writing him love letters, in virtue of the notion that a woman must write to her lover.

"But whilst she wrote it was another man she saw, a phantom fashioned out of her most ardent memories. [This is certainly not incriminating.]

"Then she fell back exhausted, for these transports of vague love wearied her more than great debauchery.

"She now felt constant ache all over her. Often she even received a summons, stamped paper that she barely looked at. She would have liked not to be alive, or to be always asleep."

I call that an excitation of virtue through a horror of vice, as the author himself calls it, and which the reader, no longer perplexed, cannot fail to see, unless influenced by ill-will.

And now, something more to make you perceive what kind of man you are about to judge. And in order to show you, not what kind of justification I may expect, but whether M. Flaubert has made use of lascivious colour, and whence he got his inspiration, let me put upon your desk this book used by him, in whose passages he found himself inspired to paint this concupiscence, the entanglements of this woman who sought happiness in illicit pleasures, but could not find it there, who sought again and again and never found it. Whence has Flaubert derived his inspiration, gentlemen? It was from this book; listen:

ILLUSION OF THE SENSES.

"Whoever, then, attaches himself to the senses, must necessarily wander from object to object and deceive himself, so to speak, by a change of place, as concupiscence,—that is to say, love of pleasure,—is always changing, because its ardour languishes and dies in continuity, and it is only change that makes it revive. Again, what is that other characteristic of a life of the senses, that alternate movement of appetite and disgust, of disgust and appetite, the soul floating ever uncertain between ardour which abates and ardour which is renewed? Inconstantia concupiscentia. That is what a life of the senses is. However, in this perpetual movement, one must not allow himself to be deceived by the image of wandering liberty."

This is what a life of the senses is. Who has said that? Who has written these words which you are about to hear upon these excitements and excessive ardor? What is the book which M. Flaubert perused day and night, and which has inspired the passages that the Government Attorney condemns? It is by Bossuet! What I shall read to you is a fragment of Bossuet's discourse upon Illicit Pleasures. I shall bring you to see that all these incriminated passages are—not plagiarized; the man who appropriates an idea is not a plagiarist—but imitations of Bossuet. Do you wish for another example? Here it is:

UPON SIN.

"And do not ask me, Christians, in what way this great change of pleasure into punishment will come about. The thing is proved by the Scriptures. It is Truth who has said it, it is the All-Powerful who has made it so. And sometimes, if you will look at the nature of the passions to which you abandon your heart, you will easily comprehend that they may become an intolerable punishment. They all have in themselves cruel pain, disgust and bitterness. They all have an infinity which is angered by not being able to be satisfied. There are transports of rage mingled in all of them which degenerates into a kind of fury not less painful than unreasonable. Love, if I may be permitted so to name it in this guise, has its uncertainties, its violent agitations, its irresolute resolutions and an abyss of jealousies."

And further:

"Ah! What, then, is easier than making of our passions an insupportable pain or sin, when, if we cut out, as is very just, the little sweetness through which they lead us, there is left of them only the cruel disquiet and bitterness with which they abound? Our sins are against us, our sins are upon us, our sins are in the midst of us; like an arrow piercing our body, an insupportable weight upon our head, a poison devouring our entrails."

Is not all that you have just listened to designed to show you the bitterness of passion? I leave you this book, lined and thumb-marked by the studious man who has found his thought there. And that man, who has been inspired from a source of this kind, who has written of adultery in the terms you have listened to, is prosecuted for outrage of public and religious morals!

A few lines still upon the woman sinner, and you will see how M. Flaubert, having decided to paint this ardour, understood taking inspiration from this model:

"But, punished for our error, without being deceived by it, we seek in change the remedy for our scorn; we wander from object to object, and if, finally there is some one who holds us, it is not because we are content with our choice, but because we are bound by our inconstancy."

* * * * *

"All appeared to her empty, false, disgusting in these creatures: far from finding there those first charms which her heart had had so much difficulty in defending, she saw in them now only frivolity, danger and vanity."

* * * * *

"I will not speak of an entanglement of passion; what fears there are that the mystery of it cannot dispel! what measures to keep on the side of well-being and pride! what eyes to shun! what watchers to deceive! what returns to fear from those whom one chooses for their aids and confidants in their passion! what indignities to suffer from him, perhaps, for whom one has sacrificed honour and liberty, and of whom one dare not complain! To all this, add those cruel moments when passion, less lively, leaves us to choose between falling back upon ourselves and feeling all the humility of our position, and those moments where the heart, born for more solid pleasures, leaves us with our own idols and finds its punishment in its own disgust and inconstancy. Profane world! if there is in you that felicity that is so much vaunted, favor your adorers with it nor punish them for the faith they have added so lightly to your promises."

Let me say to you here: when a man in the silence of the night, meditates upon the causes of enticement for woman, when he finds them in her education and, putting aside personal observation, for the sake of expressing his thoughts, matures them at the sources I have indicated, not allowing himself to use his pen except from inspiration of Bossuet and Massillon, permit me to ask you if there is a word to express my surprise, my grief, on seeing this man dragged into Court—on account of some passages in his book, and precisely for the truest and most elevated ideas that he was able to bring together! And I pray you not to forget this in relation to the charge of outrage against religious morals! And then, if you will permit me, I will put in opposition to all this, under your very eyes, what I myself call attacking the moral, that is to say, satisfaction of the senses without bitterness, without those large drops of cold sweat which fall from the brow of those who give themselves over to it; and I will not quote to you from licentious books in which the authors have sought to arouse the senses; I will quote from only one book—which is given as a prize in colleges, but whose author's name I ask leave to withhold until after I have read you a passage from it. Here is the passage: I will ask you to pass the volume. It is a copy that was given to a college student as a prize. I prefer you to take this copy rather than M. Flaubert's:

"The next day I was received into her apartment. There I felt all that voluptuousness carries with it. The room was filled with the most agreeable perfumes. She lay upon a bed which was enclosed in garlands of flowers. She appeared to be lying there languishingly. She extended her hand to me and made me sit beside her. In all, even in the veil which covered her face, there was a charm. I could see the form of her beautiful body. A simple cloth which moved as she moved allowed me at one time to see, and at another to lose sight of, her ravishing beauty."

A simple cloth when it was extended over a dead body appeared to you a lascivious image; here it is extended over a living woman:

"She noticed that my eyes were occupied, and when she saw them inflamed, the cloth seemed to open itself away from her; I saw all the treasures of a divine beauty. At this moment she took my hand; my eyes were wandering. There is only my dear Ardasire, I cry out, who can be as beautiful; but I swear to the gods that my fidelity.... She threw herself on my neck and drew me into her arms. Suddenly the room became darkened; her veil opened and she gave me a kiss. I was beside myself; a flame started suddenly through my veins and aroused all my senses. The idea of Ardasire was far from me. She remained to me only as a memory ... there appeared to me but one thought.... I was going.... I was going to prefer this one even to her. Already my hands had wandered to her breasts; they ran rapidly everywhere; love showed itself only in its fury; it hurried on to victory; a moment more and Ardasire could not defend herself."

Who, now, has written that? It is not the author of The New Heloise, it is the President, Montesquieu! Here is no bitterness, no disgust, but all is sacrificed to literary beauty, and they give it as a prize to pupils in rhetoric, without doubt to serve as a model in the amplifications and descriptions that they are required to write. Montesquieu described in his Persian Letters a scene which could not even be read. It concerns a woman placed between two men who dispute over her. This woman, placed between two men, has dreams—which appear to the author very agreeable.

Shall we sum up, Mr. Attorney? Or is it necessary for me to quote you Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Confessions, and some others? No, I will only say to the judges that if, on account of his description of the carriage in The Double Misunderstanding, M. Merimee had been prosecuted, he would have been acquitted immediately. One sees in his book only a work of art of great literary beauty. One would no more condemn it than he would condemn paintings or statuary, which is not content with representing all the beauties of the body, but wishes to add ardour and passion. I will follow it no farther; I ask you to recognise the fact that M. Flaubert has not weighted his images and has done only one thing: he has touched with a firm hand the scene of degradation. At each line of his book he has brought out the disillusion, and instead of ending it with something charming, he has undertaken to show us that this woman, after meeting scorn, abandonment, and ruin of her house, comes to a frightful death. In a word, I can only repeat what I said at the beginning of this plea, that M. Flaubert is the author of a good book, a book which aims at the excitation of virtue by arousing a horror of vice.

I will now look into his outrage against religion. An outrage against religion committed by M. Flaubert! And in what respect, if you please? The Government Attorney has thought he found in him a sceptic. I can assure the Government Attorney that he is deceived. I am not here to make a profession of faith, I am here only to defend a book, and for that reason I shall limit myself to a simple word. Now as to the book, I defy the Government Attorney to find in it anything that resembles an outrage against religion. You have seen how religion was introduced in Emma's education, and how this religion, false in a thousand ways, could not hold Emma from the bent that carried her astray. Would you know in what kind of language M. Flaubert speaks of religion? Listen to some lines that I take from the first number, pages 231, 232 and 233:

"One evening when the window was open, and she, sitting by it, had been watching Lestiboudois, the beadle, trimming the box, she suddenly heard the Angelus ringing.

"It was the beginning of April, when the primroses are in bloom, and a warm wind blows over the flower-beds newly turned, and the gardens, like women, seem to be getting ready for the summer fetes. Through the bars of the arbour and away beyond, the river could be seen in the fields, meandering through the grass in wandering curves. The evening vapors rose between the leafless poplars, touching their outlines with a violet tint, paler and more transparent than a subtle gauze caught athwart their branches. In the distance cattle moved about; neither their steps nor their lowing could be heard; and the bell, still ringing through the air, kept up its peaceful lamentation.

"With this repeated tinkling the thoughts of the young woman lost themselves in old memories of her youth and school-days. She remembered the great candlesticks that rose above the vases full of flowers on the altar, and the tabernacle with its small columns. She would have liked to be once more lost in the long line of white veils, marked off here and there by the stiff black hoods of the good sisters bending over their prie-Dieu."

This is the language in which his religious sentiment is expressed. And yet we have understood from the Government Attorney that scepticism reigned in M. Flaubert's book from one end to the other. Where, I pray you, have you found this scepticism?



THE GOVERNMENT ATTORNEY:

I have not said that there was any of it in its inner meaning.



M. SENARD:

If not in its inner meaning, where then, is it? In your cuttings, evidently. But here is the work entire, as the Court will judge it, and it can see that the religious sentiment is so forcefully imprinted there that the accusation of scepticism is pure slander. And now, the Government Attorney will permit me to say to him that it was not for the purpose of accusing the author of scepticism that all this trouble has been made. Let us proceed:

"At mass on Sundays, when she looked up, she saw the gentle face of the Virgin amid the blue smoke of the rising incense. Then she was moved; she felt herself weak and quite deserted, like the down of a bird whirled by the tempest, and it was unconsciously that she went towards the church, inclined to no matter what devotions, so that her soul was absorbed and all existence lost in it."

This, gentlemen, is the first appeal of religion to hold Emma from the trend of her passions. She has fallen, poor woman, and then been repelled by the foot of the man to whom she abandoned herself. She is nearly dead, but raises herself and becomes reanimated; and you shall see now what is written in the 15th of November number, 1856, page 548:

"One day, when at the height of her illness, she had thought herself dying, and had asked for the communion; and while they were making the preparations in her room for the sacrament, while they were turning the night-table, covered with sirups, into an altar, and while Felicite was strewing dahlia flowers on the floor, Emma felt some power passing over her that freed her from her pains, from all perception, from all feeling. Her body, relieved, no longer thought; another life was beginning; it seemed to her that her being, mounting toward God, would be annihilated in that love like a burning insense that melts into vapour. [You see that this is the language in which M. Flaubert speaks of religious things]. The bed-clothes were sprinkled with holy water, the priest drew from the holy pyx the white wafer; and it was fainting with a celestial joy that she put out her lips to accept the body of the Saviour presented to her."

I ask the pardon of the Government Attorney, I ask the Court's pardon for interrupting this passage; but I must needs say that it is the author who is speaking, and bring to your notice in what terms he expresses the mystery of the communion. Before going on with the reading, I must needs impress the literary value of this picture upon the Court and insist that they seize upon these expressions which are the author's own:

"The curtains of the alcove floated gently round her like clouds, and the rays of the two tapers burning on the night-table seemed to shine like dazzling halos. Then she let her head fall back, fancying she heard in space the music of seraphic harps, and perceived in an azure sky, on a golden throne in the midst of saints holding green palms, God the Father, resplendent with majesty, who with a sign sent to earth angels with wings of fire to carry her away in their arms."

* * * * *

"This splendid vision dwelt in her memory as the most beautiful thing that it was possible to dream, so that now she strove to recall her sensation, that still lasted, however, but in a less exclusive fashion and with a deeper sweetness. Her soul, tortured by pride, at length found rest in Christian humility, and, tasting the joy of weakness, she saw within herself the destruction of her will, that must have left a wide entrance for the inroads of heavenly grace. There existed, then, in the place of happiness, still greater joys,—another love beyond all loves, without pause and without end, one that would grow eternally! She saw amid the illusions of her hope a state of purity floating above the earth mingling with heaven, to which she aspired. She wanted to become a saint. She bought chaplets and wore amulets; she wished to have in her room, by the side of her bed, a reliquary set in emeralds that she might kiss it every evening."

Here are some of his religious sentiments! And if you wish to pause a moment to consider the author's thought, I will ask you to turn the page and read the first three lines of the second paragraph:

"She grew provoked at the doctrines of religion; the arrogance of the polemic writings displeased her by their inveteracy in attacking people she did not know; and the secular stories, relieved with religion, seemed to her written in such ignorance of the world, that they insensibly estranged her from the truths for whose proof she was looking."

This is the language of M. Flaubert. Now, if you please, we come to another scene, that of the extreme unction. Oh! Mr. Government Attorney, how you have deceived yourself when, stopping at the first words, you accuse my client of mingling the sacred with the profane; when he has been content to translate the beautiful formulas of extreme unction, at the moment when the priest touches the organs of sense, at the moment where, according to the ritual, he says: Per istam unctionem, et suam piissimam misericordiam, indulgeat tibi Dominus quid-quid deliquisti!

You said it was not necessary to touch upon holy things. With what right do you misinterpret these holy words:

"May God, in His holy pity, pardon you for all the sins that you have committed through sight, taste, hearing, etc.?"

Wait, I am going to read the condemned passage, and that will be all my vengeance. I dare say vengeance, because the author has need of being avenged! Yes, it is necessary for M. Flaubert to go out of here not only acquitted, but avenged! You will see from what kind of reading he has been nourished. The condemned passage is on page 271 of the December 15th number, and runs thus:

"Pale as a statue, and with eyes red as fire, Charles, not weeping, stood opposite her at the foot of the bed, while the priest bending one knee, was muttering words in a low voice."

This whole picture is magnificent, and the wording of it irresistible. But be quiet, and I will not prolong it beyond measure. Now here is the condemnation!

"She turned her face slowly, and seemed filled with joy on seeing suddenly the violet stole, no doubt finding again, in the midst of a temporary lull in her pain, the lost voluptuousness of her first mystical transports, with the visions of eternal beatitude that were beginning.

"The priest rose to take the crucifix: then she stretched forward her neck as one who is athirst, and gluing her lips to the body of the Man-God, she pressed upon it with all her expiring strength the fullest kiss of love that she had ever given."

The extreme unction has not yet begun; but we are reproached for this kiss. I am not going to search in the history of Saint Theresa whom you perhaps know, but the memory of whom is too far away, I am not going to seek in Fenelon for the mysticism of Madame Guyon, nor in more modern mysticisms, in which I find much reason. I only wish to ask of those schools which you designate as belonging to sensual Christianity, the explanation of this kiss; it is Bossuet, Bossuet himself, of whom I would ask it:

"Obey, and strive finally to enter into the disposition of Jesus in communing, which is the disposition of harmony, joy and love; the whole gospel proclaims it. Jesus wishes that we may be with Him; He wishes to rejoice and He wishes us to rejoice with Him: He has given Himself...." etc.

I continue the reading of the condemned passage:

"Then he recited the Misereatur and the Indulgentiam, dipped his right thumb in the oil and began to give extreme unction. First upon the eyes, that had so coveted all worldly pomp; then upon the nostrils, greedy for warm breezes and amorous perfumes; then upon the mouth, that had uttered lies, that curled with pride and cried out in lewdness; then upon the hands, that had delighted in sensual touches, and finally upon the soles of feet, so swift of yore when she was running to satisfy her desires, and that now would walk no more.

"The cure wiped his fingers, threw the bit of cotton dipped in oil into the fire, and came and sat down by the dying woman, to tell her that she must now blend her sufferings with those of Jesus Christ, and abandon herself to the Divine mercy.

"Finishing his exhortations, he tried to place in her hand a blessed candle, symbol of the celestial glory with which she was soon to be surrounded. Emma, too weak, could not close her fingers, and the taper, but for Monsieur Bournisien, would have fallen to the ground.

"However, she was not quite so pale, and her face had an expression of serenity as if the sacrament had cured her.

"The priest did not fail to point this out; he even explained to Bovary that the Lord sometimes prolonged the life of persons when he thought it meet for their salvation; and Charles remembered the day when, so near death, she had received the communion. Perhaps there was no need to despair, he thought."

Now, when a woman dies and the priest goes to give her extreme unction, if one portrays that mystic scene and translates for us the sacramental words with scrupulous fidelity, they say that he has touched upon holy things; that he has put a rash hand on sacred matters; because to the deliquisti per oculos, per os, per aurem, per manus et per pedes he has added the sin which each of the organs has committed. But we are not the first to walk in this path. M. Sainte-Beuve, in a book which you know, has also a scene of extreme unction, and here is how he expresses it:

"Oh! yes, upon the eyes first, as the most noble and most alive of the senses; upon those eyes for what they have seen and regarded too tenderly, or that which was too perfidious in others' eyes, or too mortal; for what they have read and re-read of endearment that was too dear; for what they have poured out in vain tears over fragile goods and faithless creatures; for the sleep which they have too often forgotten, thinking only of the evening!

"Upon the ears also for what they have heard and allowed themselves to hear that was too sweet, too flattering and intoxicating; for that sound which the ear steals from deceptive words; for what it drinks in from stolen honey!

"Then the smell, for the too subtle and voluptuous perfumes of evening and the springtime in the depth of the woods, for flowers received in the morning and all through the day, and breathed in with so much pleasure!

"Upon the lips, for what they have pronounced that was too confused or too open; for what they did not reply at certain moments or what they have not revealed to certain persons; for what they have sung in solitude that was too melodious and too full of tears; for their inarticulate murmur and for their silence!

"Upon the neck, in the place of on the breast, for the ardor of desire according to the consecrated expression (propter ardorem libidinis); yes, for the grief in affection and the rivalry, for too much anguish in human tenderness, for the tears which are suffocated in a voiceless throat, for all that goes to wound the heart and break it!

"Upon the hands also, for having seized a hand which was not bound to holiness; for having received too burning tears; perhaps for having begun to write and for finishing a response not lawful!

"Upon the feet, for not having fled, for not having been satisfied with long, solitary walks, for not having been weary soon enough in the midst of temptations which were ever beginning anew!"

You did not prosecute that. Here are two men who, each in his own sphere, has taken the same thing and who have, according to his own idea, added the sin, the fault. Can it be that you make an indictment for simply translating the formula of the ritual: Quidquid deliquisti per oculos, per aurem, etc.?

M. Flaubert has done just what M. Sainte-Beuve did, without plagiarizing. He has made use of a right which belongs to any writer, to add to what another has said and complete the subject. The last scene of the romance of Madame Bovary has been made a complete study of this kind from religious documents. M. Flaubert has taken the scene of the extreme unction from a book which a venerable ecclesiastic, one of his friends, lent to him; this same friend has read the scene and been moved to tears, not imagining that the majesty of religion was in any way offended. The book is entitled: An historic, dogmatic, moral, liturgical and canonical explanation of the catechism, with an answer to the objections drawn from science against religion, by the Abbe Ambroise Guillois, curate of Notre-Dame-du-Pre, 6th edition, etc., a work approved by His Eminence the Cardinal Gousset, N.N.S.S. the Bishops and Archbishops of Mans, of Tours, of Bordeaux, of Cologne, etc., vol. III., printed at Mans, by Charles Monnoyer, 1851. Now, you shall see in this book, as you saw just now in Bossuet's, the principles, and, in a certain way, the text of the passages which the Government has condemned. It is no longer M. Sainte-Beuve, an artist, a literary rhapsodist, whom I am quoting; we now listen to the Church itself:

"Extreme unction can give back health to the body if it be useful to the glory of God" ... and the priest says that this often happens. Now, here is the extreme unction:

"The priest addresses the sick with a short exhortation, if he is in a state to hear it, in order to dispose him worthily to receive the sacrament which is to be administered to him.

"The priest then passes the unction upon the sick person with the stiletto or the extremity of his right thumb, which he dips each time in the oil. This unction should be made especially upon the five parts of the body which nature has given to man as the organs of sensation, namely: the eyes, the ears, the nostrils, the mouth and the hands."

"As the priest makes the unctions [we have followed from point to point the ritual which we have copied], he pronounces the words which correspond to them.

"To the eyes, upon the closed eyeball: Through this holy unction and His divine pity, may God pardon all the sins that you have committed through sight. The sick person should at this moment have a new hatred of all the sins committed through sight: such as indiscreet looks, criminal curiosity, and reading what has caused to be born in him a host of thoughts contrary to faith or morals."

What has M. Flaubert done? He has put in the mouth of the priest, by uniting the two parts, what should be in his thoughts and also those of the sick person. He has copied purely and simply.

"To the ears: Through this holy unction and through His divine pity, may God pardon all the sins that you have committed through the sense of hearing. The sick person should, at this moment, detest anew all the errors of which he is guilty from listening with pleasure to slander, calumny, proposed dishonesty and obscene songs.

"To the nostrils: Through this holy unction and His divine pity, may the Lord pardon all the sins that you have committed through the sense of smell. At this moment the sick person should detest anew all the sins that he has committed through the sense of smell, his refined and voluptuous search for perfumes, all his sensibilities, all that he has breathed in of iniquitous odors.

"To the mouth, upon the lips: Through this holy unction and through His great pity, may the Lord pardon you all the sins that you have committed by the sense of taste and words. The sick man at this moment should detest anew all the sins that he has committed in oaths and blaspheming ... in eating and drinking to excess....

"Upon the hands: Through this holy unction and through His great pity, may the Lord pardon all the sins that you have committed through the sense of touch. The sick man ought to detest at this moment all the larcenies, the injustice of which he has been guilty, all the liberties, more or less criminal, which he has allowed himself. The priest receives the unction on his hands from without because he has already received it from within at the time of his ordination, and the sick person receives it within.

"Upon the feet: Through this holy unction and His great pity, may God pardon all the sins that you have committed in your walks. The sick man ought, at this moment, to detest anew all the steps that he has taken in the path of iniquity, such as scandalous walks, and criminal interviews.... The unction of the feet is made upon the top or on the sole, according to the convenience of the sick person, and according to the custom of the diocese where it takes place. The most common practice seems to be to make it on the soles of the feet.

"And finally upon the breast. [M. Sainte-Beuve has copied this; we have not, because it was concerned with the breast of a woman.] Propter ardorem libidinis, etc.

"On the breast: Through this holy unction and His great pity, may the Lord pardon all the sins which have been committed from the ardour of the passions. The sick man ought, at this moment, to detest anew all the bad thoughts to which he has abandoned himself, all sentiments of hatred, or vengeance that he has nourished in his heart."

And following the ritual, we could have spoken of something more than the breast, but God knows what holy anger would have been aroused in the Public Attorney's office, if we had spoken of the loins!

"To the loins: Through this holy unction and His great pity, may the Lord pardon all the sins that you have committed by irregular impulses of the flesh."

If we had said that, what a thunderbolt you would have had with which to attempt to crush us, Mr. Attorney! and nevertheless, the ritual adds: "The sick man ought, at this moment, to detest anew all illicit pleasures, carnal delights, etc...."

This is the ritual; and you have seen the condemned article. It has nothing of raillery in it, but is serious and earnest. And I repeat to you that he who lent my client this book, and saw my client make the use of it that he has, has taken him by the hand with tears in his eyes. You see, then, Mr. Government Attorney, how rash—not to use an expression which in order to be exact is not too severe—is your accusation of our touching upon holy things. You see now that we have not mingled the profane with the sacred when, at each sense we indicated the sin committed by that sense, since it is the language of the Church itself.

I insist now upon mentioning the other details of the charge of outrage against religion. The Public Minister said to me: "It is no longer religion but the morals of all time that you have outraged; you have insulted death!" How have we insulted death? Because at the moment when this woman dies, there passes in the street a man whom she had met more than once, to whom she had given alms from her carriage as she was going to her adulterous meetings; a blind man whom she was accustomed to see, who sang his song walking along slowly by the side of her carriage, to whom she threw a piece of money, but whose countenance made her shiver? This man was passing in the street; and at the moment when Divine pity pardoned, or promised pardon, to the unfortunate woman who was expiating the faults of her life by a frightful death, human raillery appeared to her in the form of the song under her window. Great Heavens! you find an outrage in this! But M. Flaubert has only done what Shakespeare and Goethe have done, who, at the supreme moment of death, have not failed to make heard some chant, or perhaps plaint, or it might be raillery, which recalls to him who is passing to eternity some pleasure which he will never more enjoy, or some fault to be atoned. Let us read:

"In fact, she looked around her slowly, as one awakening from a dream; then in a distinct voice she asked for her looking-glass, and remained some time bending over it, until the big tears fell from her eyes. Then she turned away her head with a sigh and fell back upon the pillows."

I could not read it, I am like Lamartine: "The punishment seems to me to go beyond truth...." I should not consider that I was doing a bad deed, Mr. Attorney, in reading these pages to my married daughters, honest girls who have had a good example and good teaching, and who would never, never go away from the straight path for indiscretion, or away from things that could and ought to be understood.... It is impossible for me to continue this reading and I shall hold myself rigorously to the condemned passages:

"As the death-rattle became stronger [Charles was by her side, the man whom you did not see but who is admirable] the priest prayed faster; his prayers mingled with Bovary's stifled sobs, and sometimes all seemed lost in the muffled murmur of the Latin syllables that tolled like a passing bell.

"Suddenly on the pavement was heard a loud noise of clogs, and the clattering of a stick; and a voice, a raucous voice, sang:

"'Maids in the warmth of a summer day, Dream of love and of love alway; The wind is strong this summer day, Her petticoat is blown away.'"

Emma raised herself like a galvanized corpse, her hair undone, her eyes fixed, staring.

"Where the sickle blades have been, Nannette, gathering ears of corn, Passes bending down, my queen, To the earth where they were born."

"'The blind man!" she cries.

"And Emma began to laugh, an atrocious, frantic, despairing laugh, thinking she saw the hideous face of the poor wretch that stood out against the eternal night like a menace.

"She fell back upon the mattress in a convulsion. They all drew near. She was dead."

You see, gentlemen, in this supreme moment, a recalling of her sin, and with it remorse and all that goes with it of poignancy and fear. It is not alone the whim of an artist wishing only to make a contrast without a purpose or a moral; she hears the blind man in the street singing the frightful song he had sung when she was returning all in a perspiration and hideous from an adulterous meeting; it is the same blind man whom she saw at each of those meetings; the blind man who pursued her with his song and his importunity; it is he who comes now to personify human rage at the instant when Divine pity comes to her and follows her to the supreme moment of death! And this is called an outrage against public morals! But I say, on the contrary, that it is an homage to public morals, that there is nothing more moral than this; I say that in this book the vice of education is awake, that it is taken from the true, from the living flesh of our society, and that at each stroke the author places before us this question: "Have you done what you ought for the education of your daughters? Is the religion you have given them such as will sustain them in the tempests of life, or is it only a mass of carnal superstitions which leaves them without support when the storm rages? Have you taught them that life is not the realization of chimerical dreams, that it is something prosaic to which it is necessary to accommodate oneself? Have you taught them that? Have you done what you ought for their happiness? Have you said to them: Poor children, outside the route I have pointed out to you, in the pleasures you may pursue, only disgust awaits you, trouble, disorder, dilapidation, convulsions, and execution...." And you will see that if anything were lacking in the picture, the sheriff's officer is there; there, too, is the Jew who has seized and sold her furniture to satisfy the caprices of this woman; and the husband is still ignorant of this. Nothing remains for the unfortunate woman, except death!

But, said the Public Minister, her death is voluntary; this woman died in her own time.

But how could she live? Was she not condemned? Had she not drunk to the last dregs her shame and baseness?

Yes, upon our stage we show women who have strayed (and I cannot say what they have done) as happy, charming and smiling. Questam corpore facerant. I limit myself to this remark: When they show them to us happy, charming, enveloped in muslin, presenting a gracious hand to counts, marquises and dukes, often responding themselves to the name of countess or duchess, you call that respecting public morals. But the man who depicts the adulterous woman dying a shameful death, commits an outrage against public morals!

Now, I do not wish to say it is not your opinion that you have expressed, since you have expressed it, but you have yielded to a prejudice. No, it cannot be you, the husband, the father of a family, the man who is there, it is not you, that is not possible; without the prejudice of the speech of the prosecution and a preconceived idea, you would never say that M. Flaubert was the author of a bad book! Surely, left to your inspirations, your appreciation would be the same as mine. I do not speak from a literary point of view; but from a moral and religious standard, as you understand it and I understand it, you and I could not differ.

They have said, furthermore, that we have brought upon the scene a materialistic curate. We took the curate as we took the husband. He is not an eminent ecclesiastic, but an ordinary priest, a country curate. And as we have insulted no one, expressed no thought or sentiment that could be injurious to a husband, so we have insulted no ecclesiastic. I have only a word to say beyond this. Do you wish to read books in which ecclesiastics play a deplorable role? Take Gil Blas, The Canon (of Balzac), Notre-Dame de Paris of Victor Hugo. If you wish to read of priests who are the shame of the clergy, seek them elsewhere, for you will not find them in Madame Bovary. What have we shown? A country curate, who in his function of country curate is, like M. Bovary, an ordinary man. Have I represented him as a gourmand, a libertine, or a drunkard? I have not said a word of that kind. I have represented him fulfilling his ministry, not with elevated intelligence, but as his nature allowed him to fulfill it. I have put in contact with him, and in an almost continual state of discussion, a type which lives—as the creatures of M. Prudhomme live—as all other creations of our time will live who are taken from truth and which it is not possible for one to forget, and that is the country pharmacist, the Voltairean, the sceptic, the incredulous man, who is in a perpetual quarrel with the curate. But in these quarrels, who is it that is beaten, buffeted, and ridiculed? It is Homais; to him is the most comic role given, because he is the most true, because he best paints our sceptical epoch, a fury whom we call a priest-hater. Permit me still to read to you page 206. It is the good woman of the inn who offers something to her curate:

"'What can I do for you, Monsieur le Cure?' asked the landlady, as she reached down from the chimney one of the copper candlesticks placed with their candles in a row. 'Will you take something? A thimbleful of cassis? A glass of wine?'

"The priest declined very politely. He had come for his umbrella, that he had forgotten the other day at the Ernemont convent, and after asking Madame Lefrancois to have it sent to him at the presbytery in the evening, he left for the church, from which the Angelus was ringing.

"When the chemist no longer heard the noise of his boots along the square, he thought the priest's behavior just now very unbecoming. This refusal to take any refreshment seemed to him the most odious hypocrisy; all priests tippled on the sly, and were trying to bring back the days of the tithe.

"The landlady took up the defense of her cure.

"'Besides, he could double up four men like you over his knee. Last year he helped our people to bring in the straw; he carried as many as six trusses at once, he is so strong.'

"'Bravo!' said the chemist. 'Now just send your daughters to confess to fellows with such a temperament! I, if I were the Government, I'd have the priests bled once a month. Yes, Madame Lefrancois, every month—a good phlebotomy, in the interests of the police and morals.'

"'Be quiet, Monsieur Homais. You are an infidel; you've no religion.'

"The chemist answered: 'I have a religion, my religion, and I even have more than all these others with their mummeries and their juggling. I adore God, on the contrary. I believe in the Supreme Being, in a Creator, whatever he may be. I care little who has placed us here below to fulfill our duties as citizens and fathers of families; but I don't need to go to church to kiss silver plates, and fatten, out of my pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live better than we do. For one can know him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the eternal vault like the ancients. My God! mine is the God of Socrates, of Franklin, of Voltaire, and Beranger! I am for the profession of faith of the 'Savoyard Vicar,' and the immortal principles of '89! And I can't admit of an old boy of a God who takes walks in his garden with a cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three days; things absurd in themselves, and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws, Which proves to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in torpid ignorance, in which they would fain engulf the people with them.'

"He ceased looking round for an audience, for in his bubbling over the chemist had for a moment fancied himself in the midst of the town council. But the landlady no longer heeded him; she was listening to a distant rolling."

What is this? A dialogue, a scene such as occurred each time that Homais had occasion to speak of priests.

There is something better in the last passage of page 271:

"Public attention was distracted by the appearance of Monsieur Bournisien, who was going across the market with the holy oil.

"Homais, as we due to his principles, compared priests to ravens attracted by the odour of death. The sight of an ecclesiastic was personally disagreeable to him, for the cassock made him think of the shroud, and he detested the one from some fear of the other."

Our old friend, he who lent us the catechism, was very happy over this phrase; he said to us: "It is a true hit; it is indeed the portrait of a priestophobe whom the cassock makes think of a shroud, and who holds one in execration from a little fear of the other." He was impious, and he profaned the cassock a little through impiety, perhaps, but much more because he was made to think of a shroud.

Permit me to make a resume of all this. I am defending a man who, if he had met a literary criticism upon the form of his book, or upon certain expressions, or on too much detail, upon one point or another, would have accepted that literary criticism with the best heart in the world. But to find himself accused of an outrage against morals and religion! M. Flaubert has not recovered from it; and he protests here before you with all the astonishment and all the energy of which he is capable against such an accusation.

You are not of the sort to condemn books upon certain lines, you are of the sort to judge after reflection, to judge of the way of putting a work, and you will put this question with which I began my plea and with which I shall end it: Does the reading of such a book give a love of vice, or inspire a horror of it? Does not a punishment so terrible drive one to virtue and encourage it? The reading of this book cannot produce upon you an impression other than it has produced upon us, namely: that the work is excellent as a whole, and that the details in it are irreproachable. All classic literature authorizes the painting of scenes like these we are passing upon.

With this understanding, we might have taken one for a model, which we have not done; we have imposed upon ourselves a sobriety which we ask you to take into account. If, as is possible, M. Flaubert has overstepped the bound he placed for himself, in one word or another, I have only to remind you that this is a first work, but I should then have to tell you that his error was simply one of self-deception, and was without damage to public morals. And in making him come into Court—him, whom you know a little now by his book, him whom you already love a little and will love more, I am sure, when you know him better—is enough of a punishment, a punishment already too cruel. And now it is for you to decide. You have already judged the book as a whole and in its details; it is not possible for you to hesitate!

* * * * *

THE DECISION

The Court has given audience for a part of the last week to the debate of the suit brought against MM. Leon Laurent-Pichat and Auguste-Alexis Pillet, the first the director, the second the printer of a periodical publication called the Revue de Paris, and M. Gustave Flaubert, a man of letters, all three implicated: 1st, Laurent-Pichat, for having, in 1856, published in the numbers of the 1st and the 15th of December of the Revue de Paris, some fragments of a romance entitled, Madame Bovary and, notably, divers fragments contained in pages 73, 77, 78, 272, 273, has committed the misdemeanor of outraging public and religious morals and established customs; 2nd, Pillet and Flaubert are similarly guilty; Pillet in printing them, for they were published, and Flaubert for writing and sending to Laurent-Pichat for publication, the fragments of the romance entitled, Madame Bovary as above designated, for aiding and abetting, with knowledge, Laurent-Pichat in the facts which have been prepared, in facilitating and consummating the above-mentioned misdemeanor, and of thus rendering themselves accomplices in the misdeameanor provided for by articles 1 and 8 of the law of May 17, 1819, and 59 and 60 of the Penal Code.