Gentlemen, in entering upon this debate, the Public Attorney is in the
presence of a difficulty which he cannot ignore. It cannot be put even
in the nature of a condemnation, since offenses to public morals and to
religion are somewhat vague and elastic expressions which it would be
necessary to define precisely. Nevertheless, when we speak to
right-minded, practical men we are sure of being sufficiently understood
to distinguish whether a certain page of a book carries an attack
against religion and morals or not. The difficulty is not in arousing a
prejudice, it is far more in explaining the work of which you are to
judge. It deals entirely with romance. If it were a newspaper article
which we were bringing before you, it could be seen at once where the
fault began and where it ended; it would simply be read by the ministry
and submitted to you for judgment. Here we are not concerned with a
newspaper article, but entirely with a romance, which begins the first
of October, finishes the fifteenth of December, and is composed of six
numbers, in the _Revue de Paris_, 1856. What is to be done in such a
case? What is the duty of the Public Ministry? To read the whole
romance? That is impossible. On the other hand, to read only the
incriminating texts would expose us to deep reproach. They could say to
us: If you do not show the case in all its parts, if you pass over that
which precedes and that which follows the incriminating passages, it is
evident that you wish to suppress the debate by restricting the ground
of discussion. In order to avoid this twofold difficulty, there is but
one course to follow, and that is, to relate to you the whole story of
the romance without reading any of it, or pointing out any incriminating
passage; then to cite incriminating texts, and finally to answer the
objections that may arise against the general method of indictment.
What is the title of the romance? _Madame Bovary_. This title in itself
explains nothing. There is a second in parentheses: _Provincial Morals
and Customs_. This is also a title which does not explain the thought of
the author but which gives some intimation of it. The author does not
endeavour to follow such or such a system of philosophy, true or false;
he endeavours to produce certain pictures, and you shall see what kind
of pictures! Without doubt, it is the husband who begins and who
terminates the book; but the most serious portrait of the work, the one
that illumines the other paintings, is that of Madame Bovary.
Here I relate, I do not cite. It takes the husband first at college, and
it must be stated that the boy already gave evidence of the kind of
husband he would make. He is excessively heavy and timid, so timid that
when he arrives at the college and is asked his name, he responds:
"_Charbovari_" He is so dull that he works continually without
advancing. He is never the first, nor is he the last in his class; he
is the type, if not of the cipher at least of the laughing-stock of the
college. After finishing his studies here, he goes to study medicine at
Rouen, in a fourth-story room overlooking the Seine, which his mother
rented for him, in the house of a dyer of her acquaintance. Here he
studies his medical books, and arrives little by little, not at the
degree of doctor of medicine, but that of health officer. He frequented
the inns, failed in his studies, but as for the rest, he had no other
passion than that of playing dominoes. This is M. Bovary.
The time comes for him to marry. His mother finds him a wife in the
widow of a sheriff's officer of Dieppe; she is virtuous and plain, is
forty-five years old, and has six thousand a year income. Only, the
lawyer who had her capital to invest set out one fine morning for
America, and the younger Madame Bovary was so much affected, so struck
down by this unexpected blow that she died of it. Here we have the first
marriage and the first scene.
M. Bovary, now being a widower, begins to think of marrying again. He
questions his memory; there is no need of going far; there immediately
comes to his mind the daughter of a neighboring farmer, Mile. Emma
Rouault, who had strangely aroused Madame Bovary's suspicions. Farmer
Rouault had but one daughter, and she had been brought up by the
Ursuline sisters at Rouen. She was little interested in matters of the
farm; her father was anxious for her to marry. The health officer
presented himself, there was no difficulty about the _dot_, and you
understand that with such a disposition on both sides, these things are
quickly settled. The marriage takes place. M. Bovary is at his wife's
knees, is the happiest of men and the blindest of husbands. His sole
occupation is anticipating his wife's wishes.
Here the rôle of M. Bovary ends; that of Madame Bovary becomes the
serious work of the book.
Gentlemen, does Madame Bovary love her husband, or try to love him? No;
and from the beginning there has been what we might call the scene of
initiation. From the moment of her marriage, another horizon stretched
itself out before her, a new life appeared to her. The proprietor of
Vaubyessard Castle gave a grand entertainment. He invited the health
officer and his wife, and this was for her an initiation into all the
ardour of voluptuousness! There she discovered the Duke of Laverdière
who had had some success at Court; she waltzed with a viscount and
experienced an unusual disturbance of mind. From this moment she lived
a new life; her husband and all her surroundings became insupportable to
her. One day, in looking over some furniture, she hit a piece of wire
which tore her finger; it was the wire from her wedding bouquet.
To try to dispel the _ennui_ that was consuming her, M. Bovary
sacrificed his office and established himself at Yonville. Here was the
scene of the first fall. We are now in the second number. Madame
arrived at Yonville, and there, the first person she met upon whom she
could fix her attention was--not the notary of the place, but the only
clerk of that notary, Léon Dupuis. This is a young man who is making
his own way and is about to set out for the capital. Any other than
M. Bovary would have been disquieted by the visits of the young clerk,
but M. Bovary is so ingenuous that he believes in his wife's
virtue. Léon, wholly inexperienced, has the same idea. He goes away, and
the occasion is lost; but occasions are easily found again.
There was in the neighborhood of Yonville one Rodolphe Boulanger (you
understand that I am narrating). He was a man of thirty-four years old
and of a brutal temperament; he had had much success and many easy
conquests; he then had an actress for a mistress. He saw Madame Bovary;
she was young and charming; he resolved to make her his mistress. The
thing was easy; three meetings were sufficient to bring it about. The
first time he came to an agricultural meeting, the second time he paid
her a visit, the third time he accompanied her on a horseback ride which
her husband judged necessary to her health; it was then, in a first
visit to the forest, that the fall took place. Their meetings
multiplied after this, at Rodolphe's chateau and in the health officer's
garden. The lovers reached the extreme limits of voluptuousness! Madame
Bovary wished to elope with Rodolphe, but while Rodolphe dared not say
no, he wrote a letter in which he tried to show her that for many
reasons, he could not elope. Stricken down by the reception of this
letter, Madame Bovary had a brain fever, following which typhoid fever
declared itself. The fever killed the love, but the malady
remained. This is the second scene.
We come now to the third scene. The fall with Rodolphe was followed by a
religious reaction, but it was short; Madame Bovary was about to fall
anew. The husband thought the theatre useful in the convalescence of his
wife and took her to Rouen. In a box opposite that occupied by M. and
Madame Bovary, was Léon Dupuis, the notary's young clerk, who had made
his way to Paris, and who had now become strangely experienced and
knowing. He went to see Madame Bovary and proposed a _rendezvous_.
Madame Bovary suggested the cathedral. On coming out of the cathedral,
Léon proposed that they take a cab. She resisted at first, but Léon told
her that this was done in Paris, and there was no further obstacle. The
fall takes place in the cab! Meetings follow for Léon, as for Rodolphe,
at the health officer's house, and then at a room which they rented in
Rouen. Finally, she became weary of the second love, and here begins the
scene of distress; it is the last of the romance.
Madame Bovary was prodigal, having lavished gifts upon Rodolphe and
Léon; she had led a life of luxury and, in order to meet such expense
had put her name to a number of promissory notes. She had obtained a
power of attorney from her husband in the management of their common
patrimony, fell in with a usurer who discounted the notes which, not
being paid at the expiration of the time, were renewed under the name of
a boon companion. Then came the stamped paper, the protests, judgments
and executions, and, finally, the posting for sale of the furniture of
Monsieur Bovary, who knew nothing of all this. Reduced to the most
cruel extremities, Madame Bovary asked money from everybody, but got
none. Léon had nothing, and recoiled frightened at the idea of a crime
that was suggested to him for procuring funds. Having gone through every
degree of humiliation, Madame Bovary turned to Rodolphe; she was not
successful; Rodolphe did not have 3000 francs. There remained to her but
one course: to beg her husband's pardon? No. To explain the matter to
him? No, for this husband would be generous enough to pardon her, and
that was a humiliation which she could not accept: she must poison
herself.
We come now to grievous scenes. The husband is there beside his wife's
icy body. He has her night robe brought, orders her wrapped in it and
her remains placed in a triple coffin.
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. I have related it to you,
suppressing no scene in it. It is called _Madame Bovary_. You could
with justice give it another title and call it. _Story of the Adulteries
of a Provincial Woman_.
Gentlemen, the first part of my task is fulfilled. I have related, I
shall now cite, and after the citations come the indictments which are
brought upon two counts: offense against public morals and offense
against religious morals. The offense against public morals lies in the
lascivious pictures which I have brought before your eyes; the offense
against religious morals consists in mingling voluptuous images with
sacred things. I now come to the citations. I will be brief, for you
will read the entire romance. I shall limit myself to citing four
scenes, or rather four tableaux. The first will be that of the fall with
Rodolphe; the second, the religious reaction between the two adulteries;
the third, the fall with Léon, which is the second adultery, and finally
the fourth, the death of Madame Bovary.
Before raising the curtain on these four pictures, permit me to inquire
what colour, what stroke of the brush M. Flaubert employs--for this
romance is a picture, and it is necessary to know to what school he
belongs--what colour he uses and what sort of portrait he makes of his
heroine.
The general colour of the author, allow me to tell you, is a lascivious
colour, before, during, and after the falls! When she is a child ten or
twelve years of age, she is at the Ursuline convent. At this age, when
the young girl is not formed, when the woman cannot feel those emotions
which reveal to her a new world, she goes to confession:
"When she went to confession, she invented little sins in order that she
might stay there longer, kneeling in the shadow, her hands joined, her
face against the grating beneath the whispering of the priest. The
comparisons of betrothed, husband, celestial lover, and eternal
marriage, that recur in sermons, stirred within her soul depths of
unexpected sweetness."
Is it natural for a little girl to invent small sins, since we know that
for a child the smallest sins are confessed with the greatest
difficulty? And again, at this age, when a little girl is not formed,
does it not make what I have called a lascivious picture to show her
inventing little sins in the shadow, under the whisperings of the
priest, recalling comparisons she has heard about the affianced, the
celestial lover and eternal marriage which gave her a shiver of
voluptuousness?
Would you see Madame Bovary in her lesser acts, in a free state, without
a lover and without sin? I pass over those words, "the next day," and
that bride who left nothing to be discovered which could be divined or
found out, as the phrase in itself is more than equivocal; but we shall
see how it was with the husband:
The husband of the next day, "whom one would have taken for an old
maid," the bridegroom of this bride who "left nothing to be discovered
that could be divined," arose and went out, "his heart full of the
felicities of the night, with mind tranquil and flesh content," going
about "ruminating upon his happiness like one who is still enjoying
after dinner the taste of the truffles he is digesting."
It now remains, gentlemen, to determine upon the literary stamp of M.
Flaubert and upon the strokes of his brush. Now, at the Castle
Vaubyessard do you know what most attracted this young woman, what
struck her most forcibly? It is always the same thing--the Duke of
Laverdiere, as a lover--"as they say, of Marie-Antoinette, between the
Messrs. de Coigny and de Lauzun." "Emma's eyes turned upon him of their
own accord, as upon something extraordinary and august; he had lived at
Court and slept in the bed of queens!" Can it be said that this is only
an historic parenthesis? Sad and useless parenthesis! History can
authorise suspicions, but has not the right to establish them as
fact. History has spoken of the necklace in all romances; history has
spoken of a thousand things; but these are only suspicions and, I
repeat, I know not by what authority these suspicions should be
established as facts. And, since Marie-Antoinette died with the dignity
of a sovereign and the calmness of a Christian, her life-blood should
efface faults of which there are the strongest suspicions. M. Flaubert
was in need of a striking example in the painting of his heroine, but
Heaven knows why he has taken this one to express, all at once, the
perverse instincts and the ambition of Madame Bovary!
Madame Bovary dances very well, and here she is waltzing:
"They began slowly, then went more rapidly. They turned; all around them
was turning--the lamps, the furniture, the wainscoting, the floor, like
a disc on a pivot. On passing near the doors the bottom of Emma's dress
caught against his trousers. Their legs commingled; he looked down at
her; she raised her eyes to his. A torpor seized her; she stopped. They
started again, and with a more rapid movement; the Viscount, dragging
her along, disappeared with her to the end of the gallery, where,
panting, she almost fell, and for a moment rested her head upon his
breast. And then, still turning, but more slowly, he guided her back to
her seat. She leant back against the wall and covered her eyes with her
hands."
I know well that the waltz is more or less like this, but that makes it
no more moral!
Take Madame Bovary in her most simple acts, and we have always the same
stroke of the brush, on every page. Even Justin, the neighbouring
chemist's boy, undergoes some astonishment when he is initiated into the
secrets of this woman's toilette. He carries his voluptuous admiration
as far as the kitchen.
"With his elbows on the long board on which she was ironing, he greedily
watched all these women's clothes spread out about him, the dimity
petticoats, the fichus, the collars, and the drawers with
running-strings, wide at the hips and growing narrower below.
"What is that for?" asked the young fellow, passing his hand over the
crinoline or the hooks and eyes.
"'Why, haven't you ever seen anything?' Félicité answered laughing. 'As
if your mistress, Madame Homais, didn't wear the same.'"
The husband also asks, in the presence of this fresh-smelling woman,
whether the odour comes from the skin or from the chemise.
"Every evening he found a blazing fire, his dinner ready, easy-chairs,
and a well-dressed woman, charming with an odour of freshness, though no
one could say whence the perfume came, or if it were not her skin that
made odourous her chemise."
Enough of quotations in detail! You know now the physiognomy of Madame
Bovary in repose, when she is inciting no one, when she does not sin,
when she is still completely innocent, and when, on her return from a
rendezvous, she is by the side of her husband, whom she detests; you
know now the general colour of the picture, the general physiognomy of
Madame Bovary. The author has taken the greatest care, employed all the
prestige of his style in painting the portrait of this woman. Has he
tried to show her on the side of intelligence? Never. From the side of
the heart? Not at all. On the part of mind? No. From the side of
physical beauty? Not even that. Oh! I know very well that the portrait
of Madame Bovary after the adultery is most brilliant; but the picture
is above all lascivious, the post is voluptuous, the beauty a beauty of
provocation.
I come now to the four important quotations; I shall make but four; I
hold to my outline: I have said that the first would be the love for
Rodolphe, the second the religious reaction, the third the love for
Léon, the fourth her death.
Here is the first. Madame Bovary is near her fall, nearly ready to
succumb.
"Domestic mediocrity drove her to lewd fancies, marriage tendernesses to
adulterous desires. She would have liked Charles to beat her, that she
might have a better right to hate him, to revenge herself upon him."
What was it that seduced Rodolphe and prepared him? The opening of
Madame Bovary's dress which had burst in places along the seams of the
corsage. Rodolphe took his servant to Bovary's house, to bleed him. The
servant was very ill, and Madame Bovary held the basin.
"Madame Bovary took the basin to put it under the table. With the
movement she made in bending down, her skirt (it was a summer frock with
four flounces, yellow, long in the waist and wide in the skirt) spread
out around her on the flags of the room; and as Emma, stooping,
staggered a little as she stretched out her arms, the stuff here and
there gave with the inflections of her bust."
Here is Rodolphe's reflection: "He again saw Emma in her room, dressed
as he had seen her, and he undressed her."
It is the first day they had spoken to each other. "They looked at one
another. A supreme desire made their dry lips tremble, and softly,
without an effort, their fingers intertwined."
These are the preliminaries of the fall. It is necessary to read the
fall itself.
"When the habit was ready, Charles wrote to Monsieur Boulanger that his
wife was at his command, and that they counted on his good-nature.
"The next day at noon, Rodolphe appeared at Charles's door with two
saddle-horses. One had pink rosettes at his ears and a deerskin
side-saddle.
"Rodolphe had put on high soft boots, saying to himself that no doubt
she had never seen anything like them. In fact, Emma was charmed with
his appearance as he stood on the landing in his great velvet coat and
white corduroy breeches."
"As soon as he felt the ground, Emma's horse set off at a
gallop. Rodolphe galloped by her side."
Here they are in the forest.
"He drew her farther on to a small pool where duckweeds made a greenness
on the water. Faded waterlilies lay motionless between the reeds. At the
noise of their steps in the grass, frogs jumped away to hide themselves.
"'I am wrong! I am wrong!' she said. 'I am mad to listen to you!'"
"'Why? Emma! Emma!'"
"'Oh, Rodolphe!' said the young woman slowly, leaning on his shoulder."
"The cloth of her habit caught against the velvet of his coat. She threw
back her white neck, swelling with a sigh, and faltering, in tears, with
a long shudder and hiding her face, she gave herself up to him."
Then she arose and, after shaking off the fatigue of voluptuousness,
returned to the domestic hearth, to that hearth where she would find a
husband who adored her. After this first fall, after this first
adultery, this first fault, is it a sentiment of remorse that she feels,
in the presence of this deceived husband who adores her? No! with a bold
front, she enters, glorifying adultery.
"But when she saw herself in the glass she wondered at her face. Never
had her eyes been so large, so black, of so profound a depth. Something
subtle about her being transfigured her. She repeated, 'I have a lover!
a lover!' delighting at the idea as if a second puberty had come to
her. So at last she was to know those joys of love, that fever of
happiness of which she had despaired! She was entering upon marvels
where all would be passion, ecstasy, delirium."
Thus, from this first fault, this first fall, she glorified adultery,
she sang the song of adultery, its poesy and its delights. This,
gentlemen, to me is much more dangerous and immoral than the fall
itself! Gentlemen, all pales before this glorification of adultery, even
the rendezvous at night some time after:
"To call her, Rodolphe threw a sprinkle of sand at the shutters. She
jumped up with a start; but sometimes he had to wait, for Charles had a
mania for chatting by the fireside, and he would not stop. She was wild
with impatience; if her eyes could have done it, she would have hurled
him out at the window. At last she would begin to undress, then take up
a book, and go on reading very quietly as if the book amused her. But
Charles, who was in bed, called to her to come too.
"'Come, now, Emma,' he said, 'it is time.'
"'Yes, I am coming,' she answered.
"Then, as the candles dazzled him, he turned to the wall and fell
asleep. She escaped, smiling, palpitating, undressed.
"Rodolphe had a large cloak; he wrapped her in it, and putting his arm
around her waist, he drew her without a word to the end of the garden."
"It was in the arbour, on the same seat of old sticks where formerly
Léon had looked at her so amorously on the summer evenings. She never
thought of him now.
"The cold of the nights made them clasp closer; the sighs of their lips
seemed to them deeper; their eyes, that they could hardly see, larger;
and in the midst of the silence low words were spoken that fell on their
souls sonorous crystalline, and reverberating in multiplied vibrations."
Gentlemen, do you know of language anywhere in the world more
expressive? Have you ever seen a more lascivious picture? Listen
further:
"Never had Madame Bovary been so beautiful as at this period; she had
that indefinable beauty that results from joy, from enthusiasm, from
success, and that is only the harmony of temperament with
circumstances. Her desires, her sorrows, the experience of pleasure and
her ever-young illusions had, as soil and rain and winds and the sun
make flowers grow, gradually developed her, and she at length blossomed
forth in all the plentitude of her nature. Her eyelids seemed chiselled
expressly for her long amorous looks in which the pupil disappeared,
while a strong inspiration expanded her delicate nostrils and raised the
fleshy corner of her lips, shaded in the light by a little black
down. One would have thought that an artist apt in conception had
arranged the curls of hair upon her neck; they fell in a thick mass,
negligently and with the changing chances of their adultery that unbound
them every day. Her voice now took more mellow inflections, her figure
also; something subtle and penetrating escaped even from the folds of
her gown and from the line of her foot. Charles, as when they were first
married, thought her delicious and quite irresistible."
Up to this time this woman's beauty had consisted of her grace, her
elegance, and her clothes; finally she is shown to you without a veil
and you can say whether adultery has embellished her or not.
"'Take me away,' she cried, 'carry me off! Oh, I entreat you!'
"And she threw herself upon his mouth, as if to seize there the
unexpected consent it breathed forth in a kiss."
Here is a portrait, gentlemen, which M. Flaubert knows well how to draw.
How the eyes of this woman enlarge! Something ravishing expands around
her, and then her fall! Her beauty has never been so brilliant as the
next day after her fall and the days following. What the author shows
you is the poetry of adultery, and I ask you again whether these
lascivious pages do not express a profound immorality!
I come now to the second situation, which is the religious
reaction. Madame Bovary is very ill, is at death's door. She is brought
back to life, and her convalescence is made remarkable by a little
religious awakening.
"It was at this hour that Monsieur Bournisien came to see her. He
inquired after her health, gave her news, exhorted her to religion in a
coaxing little gossip that was not without its charm. The mere thought
of his cassock comforted her."
Finally, she goes to communion. I do not like much to meet these holy
things in a romance; but at least, when one speaks of them, he need not
travesty them by his language. Is there in this adulterous woman going
to communion anything of the repentant faith of a Magdalene? No, no; she
is always the same passionate woman, seeking illusions and seeking them
even among the most august and holy things.
"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 Félicité 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 incense that melts into
vapour."
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. You can appreciate this language, gentlemen, and you will not
excuse adulterous words being introduced in any way into the sanctuary
of the Divinity!
This is the second situation. I now come to the third, which is a series
of adulteries.
After the religious transition, Madame Bovary is again ready to
fall. She goes to the theatre at Rouen. The play is _Lucia di
Lammermoor_. Emma returns to her old self.
"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."
Seeing Lagardy upon the stage, she had a desire to run into his arms, to
take refuge in his strength, even as in the incarnation of love, and of
saying to him: "Take me, take me away, let us go! thine, thine, with
thee are all my ardour and all my dreams!"
Léon was with the Bovarys.
"He was standing behind her, leaning with his shoulder against the wall
of the box; now and again she felt herself shuddering beneath the hot
breath from his nostrils falling upon her hair."
You were spoken to just now of the pollution of marriage; then you are
shown adultery in all its poesy, in its ineffable seductions. I have
said that the expression should be modified to read: the disillusions of
marriage and the pollution of adultery. Very often when one is married,
in the place of happiness without clouds which one promises himself, he
finds but sacrifice and bitterness. The word disillusion can then be
used justifiably, that of pollution, never.
Léon and Emma have a rendezvous at the cathedral. They look around or
they do not, it makes no difference. They go out.
"A lad was playing about the close.
"'Go and get me a cab!'
"The child bounded off like a ball by the Rue Quartre-Vents; then they
were alone a few minutes, face to face, and a little embarrassed.
"'Ah! Léon! Really--I don't know--if I ought,' she whispered. Then with
a more serious air, 'Do you know, it is very improper?'
"'How so?' replied the clerk. 'It is done at Paris.'
"And that, as an irresistible argument, decided her."
We know now, gentlemen, that the fall did not take place in the cab.
Through a scruple which honors him, the editor of the _Revue de Paris_
has suppressed the passage of the fall in the cab. But if the _Revue_
lowered the blinds of the cab, it does allow us to penetrate into the
room where they found a rendezvous.
Emma wished to leave it, because she had given her word that she would
return that evening.
"Moreover, Charles expected her, and in her heart she felt already that
cowardly docility that is for some women at once the chastisement and
atonement of adultery."
Once upon the sidewalk, Léon continued to walk; she followed him as far
as the hotel; he mounted the stairs, opened the door and entered. What
an embrace! Words followed each other quickly after the kisses. They
told the disappointments of the week, their presentiments, their fears
about the letters; but now all was forgotten, and they were face to
face, with their laugh of voluptuousness and terms of endearment.
"The bed was large, of mahogany, in the shape of a boat. The curtains
were in red levantine, that hung from the ceiling and bulged out too
much towards the bell-shaped bed-side; and nothing in the world was so
lovely as her brown head and white skin standing out against this purple
colour, when, with a movement of shame, she crossed her bare arms,
hiding her face in her hands.
"The warm room, with its discreet carpet, its gay ornaments, and its
calm light, seemed made for the intimacies of passion."
We are told what happened in that room. Here is still a passage, very
important as a piece of lascivious painting:
"How they loved that dear room, so full of gaiety, despite of its rather
faded splendour! They always found the furniture in the same place, and
sometimes hairpins that she had forgotten the Thursday before under the
pedestal of the clock. 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. They were pink satin,
bordered with swansdown. When she sat on his knees, her leg, then too
short, hung in the air, and the dainty shoe, that had no back to it, was
held on only by the toes to her bare foot.
"He for the first time enjoyed the inexpressible delicacy of feminine
refinements. He had never met this grace of language, this reserve of
clothing, these poses of the weary dove. He admired the exaltation of
her soul and the lace on her petticoat. Besides, was she not 'a lady'
and a married woman--a real mistress, in fine?"
This, gentlemen, is a description which leaves nothing to be desired, I
hope, from the point of view of conviction. Here is another, or rather
here is the continuation of the same scene:
"She used some words which inflamed him, with some kisses which drew
forth his soul. Where had she learned these caresses almost immaterial,
so profound and evasive were they?"
Oh! I well understand, gentlemen, the disgust inspired in her by that
husband who wished to embrace her upon her return; I comprehend
admirably that after a rendezvous of this kind, she felt with horror at
night, "that man against her flesh stretched out asleep."
That is not all, for according to the last tableau that I cannot omit,
she came to be weary of her voluptuousness.
"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."
I notice here two things, gentlemen, an admirable picture, the product
of a talented hand, but an execrable picture from a moral point of
view. Yes, M. Flaubert knows how to embellish his paintings with all
the resources of art, but without the discretion of art. With him there
is no gauze, no veils, it is nature in all her nudity, in all her
crudity!
Still another quotation:
"They knew one another too well for any of those surprises of possession
that increase its joys a hundred-fold. She was as sick of him as he was
weary of her. Emma found again in adultery all the platitudes of
marriage."
The platitudes of marriage and the poetry of adultery! Sometimes it is
the pollution of marriage, sometimes the platitudes, but always the
poetry of adultery. These, gentlemen, are the situations which
M. Flaubert loves to paint, and which, unfortunately, he paints only too
well.
I have related three scenes: the scene with Rodolphe, and you have seen
the fall in the forest, the glorification of adultery, and this woman
whose beauty became greater with this poesy. I have spoken of the
religious transition, and you saw there a prayer imprinted with
adulterous language. I have spoken of the second fall, I have unrolled
before you the scenes which took place with Léon. I have shown you the
scene of the cab--suppressed--and I have shown you the picture of the
room and the bed. Now that we believe your convictions are formed, we
come to the last scene,--that of the punishment.
Numerous excisions have been made, it would appear, by the _Revue de
Paris_. Here are the terms in which M. Flaubert complains of it:
"Some consideration which I do not appreciate has led the _Revue de
Paris_ to suppress the number of December 1st. Its scruples being
revived on the occasion of the present number, it has seen fit to cut
out still more passages. In consequence, I wish to deny all
responsibility in the lines which follow; the reader is informed that he
sees only fragments and not the complete work."
Let us pass, then, over these fragments and come to the death. 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?
After this scene comes that of extreme unction. These are holy and
sacred words for all. It is with these words that our ancestors have
fallen asleep, our fathers and our relatives, and it is with them that
one day our children will see us sleep. When one wishes to make use of
them, it should be done with exactness; it is not necessary, at least to
accompany them with the voluptuous image of a past life.
You know how the priest makes the holy unctions upon the forehead, the
ears, upon the mouth, the feet, pronouncing at the same time the
liturgical phrases: _quidquam per pedes, per auras, per pectus_, etc.,
always following with the words _misericordia_ ... sin on one side and
pity on the other. These holy, sacred words should be reproduced
exactly; and if they cannot be reproduced exactly, at least nothing
voluptuous should be put with them.
"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. 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, that had been greedy of the warm
breeze and amorous odours; then upon the mouth that had uttered lies,
that had been curled with pride and cried out in lewdness; then upon the
hands, that had delighted in sensual touches; and finally upon the soles
of the feet, so swift of yore, when she was running to satisfy her
desires, and that would now walk no more."
Now, in the prayers for the dying which the priest recites, at the end
or at the close of each verse occur these words: "Christian soul, go out
to a higher region." They are murmured at the moment when the last
breath of the dying escapes from his lips. The priest recites, etc.
"As the death-rattle became stronger the priest prayed faster; his
prayers mingled with the stifled sobs of Bovary, and sometimes all
seemed lost in the muffled murmur of the Latin syllables that tolled
like a passing-bell."
After the fashion of alternating these words, the author has tried to
make for them a sort of reply. He puts upon the sidewalk a blind man who
intones a song of which the profane words are a kind of response to the
prayers for the dying.
"Suddenly on the pavement was heard a loud noise of clogs and the
clattering of a stick; and a voice rose--a raucous voice--that 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 has flown away.'"
This is the moment when Madame Bovary dies.
Thus we have here the picture: on one side the priest reciting the
prayers for the dying; on the other the hand-organ player who excites
from the dying woman
"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."
And then later, when the body is cold, above all should the cadaver,
which the soul has just left, be respected. When the husband is there
on his knees, weeping for his wife, when he extends the shroud over her,
any other would have stopped, but M. Flaubert makes a final stroke with
his brush:
"The sheet sank in from her breast to her knees, and then rose at the
tips of her toes."
This the scene of death. I have abridged it and have grouped it after a
fashion. It is now for you to judge and determine whether there is a
mixture of the sacred and the profane in it, or rather, a mixture of the
sacred and the voluptuous.
I have related the romance, I have brought a charge against it and,
permit me to say, against the kind of art that M. Flaubert cultivates,
the kind that is realistic but not discreet. You shall see to what
limits he has gone. A copy of the _Artiste_ lately came to my hand; it
is not for us to make accusations against the _Artiste_, but to learn to
what school M. Flaubert belongs, and I ask your permission to read you
some lines, which have nothing to do with M. Flaubert's prosecuted book,
only to show to what a degree he excels in this kind of painting. He
loves to paint temptations, especially the temptations to which Madame
Bovary succumbed. Well, I find a model of its kind in the lines to
follow, from the _Artiste_, for the month of January, signed _Gustave
Flaubert_, upon the temptation of Saint Anthony. Heaven knows it is a
subject upon which many things might be said, but I do not believe it
possible to give more vivacity to the image, stronger lines to the
picture. Apollonius says to Saint Anthony:--
"What is knowledge? What is glory? Wouldst thou refresh thine eyes
under the humid jasmines? Wouldst thou feel thy body sink itself, as in
a wave, in the sweet flesh of swooning women?"
Ah! well! here is the same colour, the same strength of the brush, the
same vivacity of expression!
To resume. I have analyzed the book, I have related the story without
forgetting a page, I have then made the charge, which was the second
part of my task. I have exhibited some of the portraits, I have shown
Madame Bovary in repose, by the side of her husband, in contact with
those whom she could not tempt, and I have pointed out to you the
lascivious colour of that portrait! Then I have analyzed some of the
great scenes: the fall with Rodolphe, the religious transition, the
meetings with Léon, the death scene, and in all this I find the double
count of offense against public morals and against religion.
I had need of but two scenes: Do you not see the moral outrage in the
fall with Rodolphe? Do you not see the glorification of adultery in it?
And then, the religious outrage, which I find in the drawing of the
confession, in the religious transition, and finally, the scene of
death.
You have before you, gentlemen, three guilty ones: M. Flaubert, the
author of the book, M. Pichat who accepted it, and M. Pillet, who
printed it. In this matter, there is no misdemeanor without publicity,
and all those concerned in the publicity should be equally blamed. But
we hasten to say that the manager of the _Revue_ and the printer are
only in the second rank. The principal offender is the author,
M. Flaubert; M. Flaubert who admonished by a note from the editor,
protested against the suppression which had been made in his work. After
him comes M. Laurent Pichat, from whom you will demand a reason, not
for the suppression which he has made, but of that which he should have
made; and finally comes the printer, who is a sentinel at the door of
scandal. M. Pillet, besides, is an honourable man against whom I have
nothing to say. We ask but one thing of you, which is to apply the law
to him. Printers should read; when they do not read or have read what
they print, it is at their own risk and peril. Printers are not
machines; they have a privilege, they take an oath, they are in a
special situation and they are responsible. Again, they are, if you
will permit the expression, like an advanced guard; if they allow a
misdemeanor to pass, it is like allowing the enemy to pass. Make the
penalty as mild as you will for Pillet, be as indulgent as you like with
the manager of the _Revue_; but as for Flaubert, the principal culprit,
it is for him you should reserve your severities!
My task is accomplished; we await the objections on the part of the
defense. The general objection will be: But after all the romance is
moral on the whole, for is not adultery punished?
To this objection there are two replies: I believe that in a
hypothetically moral work, a moral conclusion cannot be reached by the
presentation of the lascivious details we find here. And again I say:
that the work is not moral at the foundation.
I say, gentlemen, that lascivious details cannot be covered by a moral
conclusion, otherwise one could relate all the orgies imaginable,
describe all the turpitude of a public woman, making her die in a
charity bed of a hospital. It would be allowable to study and depict
all the poses of lasciviousness. It would be going against all the
rules of good sense. It would place the poison at the door of all, the
remedy at the doors of few, if there were any remedy. 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; man has low
instincts and high ideas, and, with all, virtue is only the consequence
of an effort ofttimes laborious. Lascivious pictures have generally more
influence than cold reason. This is what I respond to that theory, that
is, as a first response; but I have a second.
I hold that the romance of _Madame Bovary_, from a philosophic point of
view, is not moral. Without doubt Madame Bovary died of poison; she
suffered much, it is true; but she died at her own time and in her own
way, not because she had committed adultery but because she wished to;
she died in all the prestige of her youth and beauty; she died after
having two lovers, leaving a husband who loved her, who adored her, who
found Rodolphe's portrait, his letters and Léon's, who read the letters
of a woman twice an adulteress, and who, after that, loved her still
more, even on the other side of the tomb. Who would condemn this woman
in the book? No one. Such is the conclusion. There is not in the book a
person who condemns her. If you can find one wise person, if you can
find one single principal virtue by which the adulteress is condemned, I
am wrong. But if in all the book there is not a person who makes her
bow her head, there is not an idea, a line, by virtue of which the
adulteress is scourged, it is I who am right, and the book is immoral!
Should it be in the name of conjugal honor that the book be condemned?
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.
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."
This is not a cry of unbelief, but it is at least a cry of
scepticism. Without doubt it is difficult to comprehend and believe it,
but why this stupefaction which manifest's itself at death? Why?
Because this surprise is something that is a mystery, because it is
difficult to comprehend and judge, although one must resign himself to
it. 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.
This is the conclusion of the book, drawn not by the author, but by a
man who reflects and goes to the depths of things, by a man who has
sought in this book for a person who could rule this woman. There is
none there. The only person who ruled was Madame Bovary. It is
necessary to seek elsewhere than in the book; we must look to Christian
morals, which are the foundation of modern civilization. By this
standard all explains itself, all becomes clear.
In its name the adulteress is stigmatized, condemned, not because her
act is an imprudence, exposing her to disillusions and regrets, but
because it is a crime against the family. You stigmatize and condemn
suicide, not because it is a foolish thing (the fool is not
responsible), not because it is a cowardly act (for it sometimes
requires a certain physical courage), but because it is a scorn of duty
in the life we are living, and the cry of unbelief in the life to come.
This code of morals stigmatizes realistic literature, not because it
paints the passions: hatred, vengeance, love--the world sees but the
surface and art should paint them--but not paint them without bridle,
without limits. Art without rules is not art. It is like a woman who
discards all clothing. To impose upon art the one rule of public decency
is not to subject it, not to dishonor it. One grows great only by rule.
These, gentlemen, are the principles which we profess, this the doctrine
which we defend with conscience.
* * * * *
_Plea for the Defense, by_