Gentlemen, M. Gustave Flaubert has been accused before you of making a
bad book; of having, in this book, outraged public morals and religion.
M. Gustave Flaubert is beside me and affirms before you that he has made
an honest book; he affirms before you that the thought in his book, from
the first line to the last, is a moral thought; and that, if it were not
perverted (and you have seen during the last hour how great a talent one
may have for perverting a thought) it would be (and will become again
presently) for you, as it has been already for the readers of the book,
an eminently moral and religious thought capable of being translated
into these words: the excitation of virtue through the horror of vice.
I bring M. Gustave Flaubert's affirmation here to you, and I put it
fearlessly in the light of the prosecuting attorney's speech, for this
affirmation is grave; and it is through the personality of its maker,
through the circumstances which have led to the writing of the book,
that I am going to make it understood to you.
The affirmation is grave on account of the personality that makes it:
and, permit me to say to you that M. Gustave Flaubert is not to me an
unknown man who has instructions to give me, and who has need of
recommendations from me--I speak not only of his morality but of his
position. I come here, into this precinct, fulfilling a duty of
conscience after reading the book, after feeling myself exalted, by this
reading, in all that is honest and profoundly religious. But, at the
same time that I come fulfilling a duty of conscience, I come to fulfill
a duty of friendship. I remember, and I can never forget, that his
father was an old friend of mine. His father, by whose friendship I was
long honoured, to the last day of his life, his father,--permit me to
say his illustrious father,--was for thirty years surgeon-in-chief at
the hospital at Rouen. He was in charge of the Dupuytren dissecting
room, and in giving to science great instruction, he has endowed it with
some great names; I will mention but one, that of Cloquet. He has not
only left for himself a good name in science, he has left a grand
memento in his immense service to humanity. And at the same time I am
recalling my bond of friendship with him, I wish to tell you that his
son, who has been dragged into Court for an outrage against morals and
religion, this son is the friend of my children, as I was the friend of
his father. I know his thought, I know his intentions, and the
counsellor has the right here of placing himself as a personal guaranty
of his client.
Gentlemen, a great name and great memories have obligations. Children
were not wanting to M. Flaubert. There were three of them, two sons, and
a daughter who died at twenty-one. The eldest has been judged worthy to
succeed his father; and he is to-day, as he has been for many years,
carrying on the mission which his father conducted for thirty years. The
younger son is here; he is at your bar. In leaving them a considerable
fortune and a great name, their father has left upon them the obligation
of being men of intelligence and of heart; that is to say, useful men.
The brother of my client has been thrown into a career where each day
brings its own service. This one has devoted his life to study and to
letters, the work before you being his first work. This first work,
gentlemen, which provokes the passions, as the Government Attorney has
said, is the result of long study and much thought. M. Gustave Flaubert
is a man of serious character, turning his attention, through his very
nature, to serious subjects, to sad subjects. He is not the man whom the
prosecuting attorney, in fifteen or twenty lines bitten out here and
there, has presented to you as a maker of lascivious pictures. No; there
is in his nature, I repeat, all that is gravest, most serious, and even
the saddest that one could imagine. His book, by restoring a single
phrase, by putting beside the quoted lines the lines which precede and
follow, will take on its veritable colour, as soon as you understand the
intentions of the author. And, of the too clever words to which you have
listened, there will remain to you only the memory of a sentiment of
profound admiration for a talent which can thus transform things.
I have told you that M. Gustave Flaubert was a serious and grave man.
His studies, conforming to his nature, have been serious and broad. They
have embraced not only all branches of literature, but the right
branches. M. Flaubert is not the man to be content with observations of
even the best where he lived; he has sought out the best in other
places; _Qui mores multorum vidit et urbes_.
After his father's death and the completion of his studies at college,
he visited Italy, and from 1848 to 1852 traveled through the countries
of the Orient,--Egypt, Palestine, Asia Minor--in which countries,
doubtless, a man traveling through and bringing to his travels a fine
intelligence, could acquire something exalted, something poetic, as well
as the colour and prestige of style which the public minister has just
pointed out, to make good the misdemeanor that he imputes. That prestige
of style, those literary qualities pointed to with _éclat_ in this
debate, are there, but after no fashion can they be brought up for
indictment.
Since his return, in 1852, M. Gustave Flaubert has written and sought to
produce in a grand outline the result of his close and serious studies,
the result of what he had gathered in his journeys.
What is the outline he has chosen, the subject he has taken, and how has
he treated it? My client belongs to any of the schools, whose names I
have just learned in the Attorney's speech. Heaven knows he belongs to
the realistic school, in that he occupies himself with the reality of
things. He belongs to the psychological school, in the sense that it is
not material things which engage him, but human sentiment and the
development of the passions wherever the human being is placed. He
belongs to the romantic school less perhaps than to any other, because,
if romanticism appears in his book, as does realism, it appears only in
some ironical expressions here and there, which the public attorney has
taken seriously. What M. Flaubert especially wished was to take a
subject of study from real life, creating from it some true types of the
middle class, arriving finally at some useful result. Yes, what has most
occupied my client in the studies to which he has devoted himself, is
precisely this useful aim, followed out in putting upon the scene three
or four personages from actual society, living in the conditions of real
life, and presenting them to the eyes of the reader in a true picture of
what is met with very often in the world.
The Prosecuting Attorney, summing up his opinion of _Madame Bovary_, has
said:
"The second title of this work might be: _The Story of the Adulteries of
a Provincial Woman_."
I protest vigorously against this title. This alone, had I not listened
to your speech from beginning to end, would prove to me the prejudice in
which you are firmly bound. No! the second title of this work is not:
_The Story of the Adulteries of a Provincial Woman_; it is, if it is
absolutely necessary to have a second title: the story of the education
too often met with in the provinces; the story of the perils to which
such an education leads; the story of degradation, of dishonesty, of
suicide, considered as a consequence of a first fault, and a fault led
up to through wrong-doing, by which a young woman is often carried
away. It is the story of an education, and the deplorable life of which
such an education is often the preface. This is what M. Flaubert
desired to paint, and not the adulteries of a woman of the provinces.
You will see this at once on reading the incriminated book.
Now, the prosecuting attorney perceives in all this, and through it all,
a lascivious colour. If it were possible to take the number of lines of
the book which he has cut out, and put parallel to them other lines that
he has left, we should have a total proportion of about one to five
hundred; and you would see that this proportion of one to five hundred
was in no way of a lascivious colour; it exists only under the
conditions of being cut out and commented upon.
Now, what has M. Flaubert desired to paint? First, education given to a
woman which is above the conditions to which she was born--something
that too often happens among us, it must be confessed. Then, the mixture
of discordant elements that are thus produced in the intelligence of the
woman; and then when marriage comes, especially if the marriage is not
in accordance with the education, but rather with the conditions under
which the woman was born, the author explains all these facts which
occur in the situation that he depicts.
What has he shown? He shows a woman entering upon vice because of a
disappointing match; then vice in its last degree, degradation and
wretchedness. Presently, when through the reading of several passages,
I shall have made you acquainted with the book as a whole, I shall
demand of this tribunal the privilege of their accepting the question on
these terms: Would this book, put into the hands of a young woman, have
the effect of leading her towards easy pleasures, towards adultery, or,
on the contrary, would it show her the danger of the first step, and
bring upon her a shiver of horror? The question thus put, your
conscience would soon decide.
I have here stated that M. Flaubert wished to paint a woman who, instead
of trying to adapt herself to the conditions in which she was placed, to
her position and her birth, instead of seeking to make herself a part of
the life to which she belonged, was occupied with a thousand foreign
aspirations drawn from an education too far above her; instead of
accommodating herself to the duties of her position, of being the
tranquil wife of a country doctor with whom she should pass her days, in
place of seeking her happiness in her house and in her marriage, sought
it in interminable fancies; and then, meeting a young man upon the way
who coquetted with her, she played the same game with him (Heaven knows
they were both inexperienced enough!) urging herself on by degrees, and
frightened when she turned to the religion of her early years and found
it insufficient. We shall see presently why this was so. At first, the
young man's ignorance and her own preserves her from danger. But she
soon meets a man, of the kind of which there are too many in the world,
who takes possession of her--this poor woman, already perverted and
ready to stray. Here is the main point; now it is necessary to see what
the book makes of it.
The Public Minister becomes incensed, and I believe wrongly so from the
standard of conscience and the human heart, over that first scene, where
Madame Bovary finds a sort of pleasure, of joy, in having broken her
prison, and returns to her home saying: "I have a lover." Do you believe
that this is not the first cry of the human heart! The proof is between
you and me. But we must look a little further, and then we shall see
that, if the first moment, the first instant of the fall, excites in
this woman a sort of transport of joy, of delirium, in some lines
farther on the deception makes itself manifest and, following the
expression of the author, she seems humiliated in her own eyes.
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. This word has shocked you; in the place of
_disillusions_, you would have wished _pollution_ of adultery. This
tribunal shall be the judge. As for me, if I had depicted the same
personage I would have said to her: 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. I would have
liked better his not speaking so strongly, his not pronouncing the word
_pollution_, but rather averting the woman from deception, from
disillusion, and saying to her: Where you believe you will find love,
you will find only libertinism; where you think you will find happiness,
there is only bitterness. A husband who goes tranquilly about his
affairs, who kisses you, puts on his house cap and eats his soup with
you, is a prosaic husband revolting to you; you aspire to a man who will
love you, idolize you; poor child! that man will be a libertine who will
have taken you for a minute for the sake of playing with you. 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.
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. And
Heaven knows that to those of our young women who do not find in lofty,
honest principle and stern religion enough to keep them steady in the
accomplishment of their duties as mothers, or who do not find it in that
resignation and practical science of life which bids us accommodate
ourselves to what we have, but who carry their dreams to the outside
(and the most honest, the most pure of our young women, in the prosaic
life of their households, are sometimes tormented by that which is going
on outside), a book like this would bring but one reflection. Of that
you may be sure. And this is what M. Flaubert has intended.
And notice carefully one thing: M. Flaubert is not the man who has
painted a charming adultery for you, in order to arrive later with the
_Deus ex machina_; no, you are carried too quickly on to the last
page. Adultery with him is only a series of torments, remorse and
regret; and then he arrives at the final, frightful expiation. It is
excessive. If M. Flaubert sins, it is through excess; and I will show
you presently what is meant by this. The expiation is not allowed to
wait, and it is that which makes the book eminently moral and useful. It
does not promise the young woman some beautiful years at the end of
which she can say: after this, one is willing to die. No! from the
second day there is bitterness and disillusion. The conclusion for
morality is found in each line of the book.
This book is written with a power of observation to which the Government
Attorney has rendered justice. And it is here that I would call your
attention to it, because if the accusation is without foundation, it
must fall. This book is written with a power truly remarkable for
observing the smallest details. An article in the _Artiste_, signed
Flaubert, has served as yet another text for the accusation. Let the
Government Attorney note, first that this article is foreign to the
indictment; then, that we will hold him innocent and moral in the eyes
of this tribunal on one condition, which is, that he will have the
goodness to read the entire article from the place of the cutting.
The most noticeable thing in M. Flaubert's book is what some accounts
have called a fidelity wholly Daguerreian in the reproduction of the
type of things, and in the intimate nature of the thought of the human
heart;--and this reproduction becomes more powerful still by the magic
of his style. Now notice, that if he had applied this fidelity only to
the scenes of degradation, you could say with reason: the author has
been pleased to paint the scenes of degradation with that power of
description which is peculiarly his own. From the first to the last page
of his book, he keeps close to all the facts in Emma's life, without any
kind of reserve, from her infancy in her father's house, to her
education in the convent, sparing nothing. And those of us who have read
the book from beginning to end can say--and this is a notable point
which should put him in a favorable light with you, not only bringing
him acquittal, but removing from him every kind of misunderstanding--that
when he comes to the difficult parts, precisely at the time of
degradation, in place of doing as some classic authors have done, (as
the Public Attorney knows full well, but whom he forgot when he wrote
his address) a few pages of whose writings I have with me here, (not to
read to you but for you to run through in Court--and I might quote a few
lines here presently), in place of doing as our great classic authors,
our great masters have done, who never hesitate at description when they
have come to the scene of a union of the senses between man and woman,
M. Flaubert contents himself with a word. All his descriptive power
disappears, because his thought is chaste; because where he might write
in his own manner and with the magic of his style, he feels that there
are some things that should not be described or even touched upon. The
Public Attorney finds that he has still said too much. When I have shown
him some men who, in great philosophical works, have delighted in
descriptions of these things, and when in the light of this fact I have
shown that this man, who possesses the descriptive faculty to so high a
degree and who, far from using it, desists and abstains from it, I shall
indeed have the right to ask why this accusation has been brought?
Nevertheless, gentlemen, just as he has described to us the pleasant
cradle of Emma's infancy, with its foliage, its rose-colored and white
flowers which gladdened her with their blossoms and their perfume, so he
has described her when she went out from there into other paths, into
paths where she found mire, where her feet became soiled from its
contact, when the mire rose higher than herself and--he need not have
told it! But that would be to suppress the book completely, and I am
going far enough to say would suppress its moral element under a pretext
of defending it; for if a fault cannot be shown, if it cannot be pointed
out, if in a picture of real life which aims to show, through thought,
peril, fall and punishment, you would debar painting such as this, it is
evident you would cut out of the book its whole purpose.
This book was not a matter of a few hours' amusement for my client. It
represents two or three years of incessant study. And now I am going to
tell you something more: M. Flaubert who, after so many years of labor,
so many of study, so many journeys, so many notes culled from authors he
had read,--and Heaven grant you may see the fountain-head from which he
has drawn, for this strange fact will take upon itself his
justification--M. Flaubert (and his lascivious colour)--you will find
impregnated wholly with Bossuet and Massillon. It is in the study of
these authors that we shall presently find him seeking, not to
plagiarize, but to reproduce in his descriptions the thoughts and
colours employed by them. And can you believe, after all that, having
done this work with so much love for it, and with a decided purpose,
that, full of confidence in himself, and after so much study and
meditation, he would wish to throw himself immediately into the arena?
He would have done it, no doubt, had he been an unknown man, if his name
had belonged to himself in sole ownership, had he believed himself able
to dispose of it and use it as it seemed good to him; but, I repeat, he
is one of those upon whom rests the obligation of rank. His name is
Flaubert, he is the second son of M. Flaubert, and he has desired to
make a place for himself in literature, profoundly respecting the moral
and religious phases of it,--not through the notoriety of a lawsuit, for
such a purpose could not enter his thoughts--but through personal
dignity, not wishing his name to be at the head of a publication that
did not seem to some persons and to those in whom he had faith, worthy
of being published. M. Flaubert read in fragments, and even in
totality, to friends holding high places in the world of letters, the
pages which he hoped some day to print, and I assure you that not one of
them has been offended by what has just now excited such lively severity
on the part of the Government Attorney. No one even thought of it. They
simply examined and studied the literary value of the book. As to the
moral purpose, it is so evident, so written in every line in terms so
unequivocal that there was no need of raising the question.
Reassured upon the value of the book, encouraged, furthermore, by the
most eminent men of the press, M. Flaubert thought only of printing it
and giving it to the public. I repeat: everyone was unanimous in
rendering homage to its literary merit, to its style, and at the same
time to the excellent thought that pervaded it, from the first line to
the last. And when this action was brought it was not he alone who was
surprised and profoundly troubled, but, permit me to say, we, who cannot
understand the action, and I myself most of all, who had read the book
with a very lively interest as soon as it was published. But we are his
intimate friends. Heaven knows that there are some shades of meaning
that might escape us in our easy-going habits which never could escape
women of great intelligence, of great purity and unquestioned
chastity. These are not names which can be pronounced in this audience,
but if I could tell you what has been said to Flaubert, what has been
said to me, even, by mothers of families who have read this book, if I
could tell you their astonishment, after receiving from that reading an
impression so good that they believed they should thank the author for
it, if I could tell you their astonishment, their grief, when they
learned that this book was thought to oppose public morals and religious
faith, the faith of their whole life, God knows there would be in the
sum of this appreciation sufficient to fortify me, had I need of being
fortified for this combat with the Public Attorney.
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.
Lamartine did not know my client; he did not know that he
existed. Lamartine, at his home in the country, read _Madame Bovary_ in
each number of the _Revue de Paris_, and Lamartine found there such
power that it recurred to him again and again, as I am going to tell
you.
After some days, Lamartine returned to Paris, and the next day informed
himself where M. Gustave Flaubert lived. He sent to the _Revue_ to learn
where M. Gustave Flaubert lived, who had published in the magazine some
articles under the title of _Madame Bovary_. He then directed his
secretary to go and present his compliments to M. Flaubert, to express
for him the satisfaction he had found in reading his book, and also his
desire to see the new author who revealed himself in an essay of that
order.
My client went to Lamartine's house; and he found in him not only a man
who encouraged him, but who said to him:
"You have made the best book I have read in twenty years."
In a word, his praise was such that, in his modesty, my client scarcely
liked to repeat it to me. Lamartine proved to him that he had read each
number, proving it most graciously by repeating entire pages from
them. Lamartine only added:
"While I have read even to the last page without reserve, I did blame
the last pages. You have hurt me, you have literally made me suffer! The
punishment is beyond all proportion to the crime; you have created a
pitiably frightful death! Assuredly the woman who defiles the marriage
bed should expect punishment, but this is horrible; it is a punishment
such as I have never seen. You have gone too far; you have done mischief
to my nerves. That power of description which you have applied to the
last moment of death has left upon me an indelible suffering!"
And when Gustave Flaubert said to him:
"But, Monsieur de Lamartine, do you know that I have been indicted and
summoned to a court of correction for an offense against public morals
and religion for having made a book like that?"
Lamartine answered:
"I believe that I have been all my life a man who, in literary works as
well as others, comprehends fully what makes for public and religious
morals; my dear child, it is not possible to find in France a tribunal
that will convict you."
This is what passed between Lamartine and Flaubert yesterday, and I have
the right to say to you that this approval is among those which are
worthy to be well weighed.
This well understood, let us see how my conscience could tell me that
_Madame Bovary_ was a good book, a good deed. And I ask your permission
to add that I do not take to these things easily, this facility is not
my habit. Some literary works I take up which, although emanating from
our great writers, do not remain two minutes before my eyes. I will pass
to you in the council chamber some lines that I took no delight in
reading, and I will ask your permission to say to you that when I came
to the end of M. Flaubert's work, I was convinced that a cutting made by
the _Revue de Paris_ was the cause of all this. I shall ask you further
to add my appreciation to this highest and most distinguished
appreciation which I am about to mention.
Here, gentlemen, is a portfolio filled with the opinions of all the
literary men of our time upon the work with which we are engaged, among
whom are some of the most distinguished, expressing their astonishment
upon reading this new work, at once so moral and so useful!
Now, how has it come about that a work like this can incur a process of
law? If you will permit me, I will tell you. The _Revue de Paris_, whose
reading committee had read the work in its entirety, for the manuscript
was sent long before it was published, evidently found nothing to
criticise. When it came time to print the copy of December 1st, 1856,
one of the directors of the _Revue_ became affrighted at the scene in
the cab. He said: "This is not conventional, we must suppress it."
Flaubert was offended by the suppression. He was not willing that it
should be made unless a note to that effect were placed at the bottom of
the page. It was he who exacted the note. It is he who, on account of
his self-respect as an author, neither wishing to have his work
mutilated nor, on the other hand wishing to make trouble for the
_Revue_, said: "You may suppress it if it seems best to you, but you
will state that you have suppressed something." And they agreed upon
the following note:
"The directors have seen the necessity of suppressing a passage here
which did not seem fitting to the _Revue de Paris_; we give notice of it
to the author."
Here is the suppressed passage which I am going to read to you. We have
only a proof, which we had great difficulty in procuring. The first part
has not a single correction; one word is corrected in the second part.
"'Where to, sir?' asked the coachman.
"'Where you like,' said Léon, forcing Emma into the cab.
"And the lumbering machine set out. It went down the Rue Grand-Pont,
crossed the Place des Arts, the Quai Napoléon, the Pont Neuf, and
stopped short before the statue of Pierre Corneille.
"'Go on,' cried a voice that came from within.
"The cab went on again, and as soon as it reached the Carrefour
Lafayette, set off down-hill, and entered the station at a gallop.
"'No, straight on!' cried the same voice.
"The cab came out by the gate, and soon having reached the Cours,
trotted quietly beneath the elm-trees. The coachman wiped his brow, put
his leather hat between his knees, and drove his carriage beyond the
side alley by the meadow to the margin of the waters.
"It went along by the river, along the towing-path paved with sharp
pebbles, and for a long while in the direction of Oyssel, beyond the
isles.
"But suddenly it turned with a dash across Quatre-mares, Sotteville, La
Grande-Chaussée, the Rue d'Elbeuf, and made its third halt in front of
the Jardin des Plantes.
"'Get on, will you?' cried the voice more furiously.
"And at once resuming its course, it passed by Saint-Sever, by the Quai
des Curandiers, the Quai aux Meules, once more over the bridge, by the
Place du Champ de Mars, and behind the hospital gardens, where old men
in black coats were walking in the sun along the terrace all green with
ivy. It went up the Boulevard Bouvreuil, along the Boulevard Cauchoise,
then the whole of Mont-Riboudet to the Deville hills.
"It came back; and then, without any fixed plan or direction, wandered
about at hazard. The cab was seen at Saint-Pol, at Lescure, at Mont
Gargan, at La Rouge-Marc and Place du Gaillardbois; in the Rue
Maladrerie, Rue Dinanderie, before Saint-Romain, Saint-Vivien,
Saint-Maclou, Saint-Nicaise--in front of the Customs, at the 'Vieille
Tour,' the 'Trois Pipes,' and the Monumental Cemetery. From time to
time, the coachman on his box cast despairing eyes at the
public-houses. He could not understand what furious desire for
locomotion urged these individuals never to wish to stop. He tried to
now and then, and at once exclamations of anger burst forth behind
him. Then he lashed his perspiring jades afresh, but indifferent to
their jolting, running up against things here and there, not caring if
he did, demoralised, and almost weeping with thirst, fatigue, and
depression.
"And on the harbour in the midst of the drays and casks and in the
streets at the corners, the good folk opened large wonder-stricken eyes
at this sight, so extraordinary in the provinces, a cab with blinds
drawn, and which appeared thus constantly shut more closely than a tomb,
and tossing about like a vessel.
"Once, in the middle of the day, in the open country, just as the sun
beat most fiercely against the old plated lanterns, a bared hand passed
beneath the small blinds of yellow canvas, and threw out some scraps of
paper that scattered in the wind, and farther off alighted like white
butterflies on a field of red clover all in bloom.
"At about six o'clock, the carriage stopped in a back street of the
Beauvoisine Quarter, and a woman got out, who walked with her veil down,
and without turning her head.
"On reaching the inn, Madame Bovary was surprised not to see the
diligence. Hivert, who had waited for her fifty-three minutes, had at
last started.
"Nothing, however, could prevent her setting out; she had promised to
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."
M. Flaubert calls my attention to the fact that the Public Attorney
condemned this last clause.