Various

“ 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. ”

“ Yes, deception, grief, and remorse come to her at the same time. The man in whom she has confided, to whom she has given herself up, has only made use of her for the moment, as he would a plaything; remorse and regret now rend her heart. It has shocked you to hear this called the disillusion of adultery; you would have preferred pollution at the hand of a writer who placed before you a woman who, not having comprehended marriage, felt herself polluted by contact with her husband, and who, having sought her ideal elsewhere, found the disillusions of adultery. ”

“ Who are the ones to read M. Flaubert's romance? Are they men who are interested in political or social economy? No! The light pages of Madame Bovary fall into hands still lighter, into the hands of young girls, sometimes of married women. Well, when the imagination has been seduced, when this seduction has fallen upon the heart, when the heart shall have told it to the senses, do you believe that cold reason would have much power against this seduction of sense and sentiment? And then, man should not clothe himself too much in his power and his virtue ”

“ 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! ”

“ They lunched by the fireside on a little round table, inlaid with rosewood. Emma carved, put bits on his plate with all sorts of coquettish ways, and she laughed with a sonorous and libertine laugh when the froth of the champagne ran over from the glass to the rings on her fingers. They were so completely lost in the possession of each other that they thought themselves in their own house, and that they would live there till death, like two spouses eternally young. They said 'our room,' 'our carpet,' she even said 'my slippers,' a gift of Léon's, a whim she had had. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Poor woman! if you believe that your husband's kisses are monotonous and wearisome, if you have found only platitudes—this word has been especially brought to our notice—the platitudes of marriage—if you seem to see pollution in a union where love does not preside, take care, for your dreams are an illusion, and you will one day be cruelly deceived. But this man, gentlemen, who knows how to speak strongly, makes use of the word pollution to express what we would have called disillusion, and he has used the true word, although vague to him who can bring to it no intelligence. ”

“ This, gentlemen, is what M. Flaubert has said, what he has painted, what is in each line of his book; and this is what distinguishes his work from all other works of the kind. Under his hand, the great irregularities of society figure on each page, and adultery walks abroad full of disgust and shame. He has brought into the common relations of life the most powerful teaching that can be given to a young woman. ”

“ One day he opens a secretary and there finds Rodolphe's picture, his letters and Léon's. Do you think his love is then shattered? No, no! on the contrary, he is excited and extols this woman whom others have possessed, as proved by these souvenirs of voluptuousness which she had left to him; and from that moment he neglects his office, his family, lets go to the winds the last vestige of his patrimony, and is found dead one day in the arbor in his garden, holding in his hand a long lock of black hair. This is the romance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ No, for conjugal honor is represented here by a devoted husband who, after the death of his wife, meets Rodolphe and seeks to find upon the face of the lover the features of the woman he loved. I ask you whether you could stigmatize this woman in the name of conjugal honor when there is not in the book a single word where the husband does not bow before the adulteress?
Should it be in the name of public opinion? No, for public opinion is personified in a grotesque being, in the Homais apothecary surrounded by ridiculous persons whom this woman dominated. ”

“ Ah! if in the freshness of her beauty, before the pollution of marriage and the disillusions of adultery, she could have anchored her life upon some great, strong heart, then virtue, tenderness, voluptuousness, and duty blending, she would never have fallen from so high a happiness. ”

“ There will be some illusion about it the first time, perhaps the second; you may come back home joyous, singing the song of adultery. "I have a lover!" but the third time you will not wish to go to him, for the disillusion will have come. The man you have dreamed of will have lost all his prestige; you will have found again in love the platitudes of marriage, and this time with scorn, disdain, disgust and poignant remorse. ”

“ Will you condemn it in the name of religious sentiment? No, for this sentiment you see personified in the curate Bournisien, a priest as grotesque as the apothecary, believing only in physical suffering, never in moral, and little more than a materialist.
Will you condemn it in the name of the author's conscience? I know not what the author thinks, but in chapter 10, the only philosophical one of his book, I read the following:
"There is always after the death of any one a kind of stupefaction; so difficult is it to grasp this advent of nothingness and to resign ourselves to believe in it." ”

“ In what tongue does one pray to God in language addressed to a lover in the outpourings of adultery? Without doubt they will tell us it is local colour, and excuse it on the ground that a vapourous, romantic woman does nothing, even in religion, like anybody else. There is no local colour which can excuse this mixture! Voluptuous one day, religious the next, there is no woman, even in other countries, under the sky of Spain or Italy, who murmurs to God the adulterous caresses which she gives her lover. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 hastily, 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ And as for me, I say that if death is the beginning of annihilation, that if the devoted husband feels his love increase on learning of the adulteries of his wife, that if opinion is represented by a grotesque being, that if religious sentiment is represented by a ridiculous priest, one person alone is right, and that is Emma Bovary,—Messalina was right against Juvenal. ”

“ 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." ”

“ An outrage to public morals! Surely, it is too easy to accuse with a system like this. God forbid that the authors of dictionaries fall under the Government Attorney's hand! Who could escape condemnation if, by means of cutting, not of phrases, but of words, one is to be informed of a list he has made that might offend morals or religion?
My client's first thought, which unfortunately met with resistance, was this: "There is only one thing to do: print the book immediately, not with parts cut out, but the work entire as it left my hands, restoring to it the scene in the cab." ”

“ She poisons herself. She poisons herself, why? Ah! it is a very little thing, is death, she thinks; I am going to fall asleep and all will be finished. Then, without remorse, without an avowal, without a tear of repentance over this suicide which is brought about by adulteries in the night watches, she goes to receive the sacrament for the dying. Why the sacrament, since in her last thought she is going to annihilation? Why, when there is not a tear, not a sigh of the Magdalene over her crime of infidelity, her suicide, or her adulteries? ”

“ However, in the midst of all the appreciative voices of contemporaneous literature there is one which I wish to mention to you. There is one who is not only respected by reason of a grand and beautiful character, who, in the midst of adversity, of suffering even, has struggled courageously each day; who is not only great by virtue of many deeds useless to recall here, but great through his literary works which must be recalled because here he is an authority; great especially through the purity which exists in all his works, through the chastity of all his writings: Lamartine. ”

“ 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. ”