If I have been mistaken, if you made no reproach, that is the best
response that could be given. I believed that I understood you to make
one; let us see how I may be deceived. Moreover, here is what I read at
the end of page 36:
"And yet, in accord with theories she believed right, she desired to
make herself in love with him. By moonlight in the garden she recited
all the passionate rhymes she knew by heart, and, sighing, sang to him
many melancholy adagios; but she found herself as calm after this as
before, and Charles seemed no more amorous and no more moved.
"When she had thus for a while struck the flint on her heart without
getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of understanding what she did not
experience as of believing anything that did not present itself in
conventional forms, she persuaded herself without difficulty that
Charles's passion was nothing very exorbitant. His outbursts became
regular; he embraced her at certain fixed times. It was one habit among
other habits, and, like a dessert, looked forward to after the monotony
of dinner."
On page 37 we find a group of similar things. Now, here is where the
peril begins. You know how she has been brought up; and I beg you not to
forget this for an instant.
There is not a man who, having read this, would not say that M. Flaubert
is not only a great artist but a man of heart, for having in the last
six pages turned all the horror and scorn upon the woman and all the
interest towards the husband. He is a great artist, as has been said,
because he has left the husband as he was, he has not transformed him,
and to the end he is the same good man, commonplace, mediocre, full of
the duties of his profession, loving his wife well, but destitute of
education or elevation of thought. He is the same at the death-bed of
his wife. And nevertheless, there is not an individual to whom the
memory returns with more interest.
Why? Because he has kept to the end his simplicity and uprightness of
heart; because to the end he has fulfilled his duty while his wife was
led astray. His death is as beautiful and as touching as the death of
his wife is hideous. On the dead body of the woman the author has shown
the spots made by the vomiting of poison; they soil the white shroud in
which she goes to her burial, and he has made her, as he desired, an
object of disgust; but there is a man there who is sublime--the husband
standing beside the grave. There is a man who is grand, sublime, whose
death is admirable--the husband, who, finding himself broken-hearted by
the death of his wife, sees afterwards all the illusions of the heart
that remained to him embraced in the thought of his wife in the tomb.
Keep that, I beg you, in your remembrance. The author has gone beyond
what was necessary--as Lamartine has said--in rendering the death of the
woman hideous and her punishment most terrible. The author has
concentrated all the interest upon the man who did not deviate from the
line of duty, who preserved his mediocre character, to be sure (for the
author could not change his character) but who preserved also all his
generosity of heart, while upon the wife who deceived him, ruined him,
gave him into the hands of usurers, put into circulation forged notes
and finally arrived at suicide, was heaped all the accumulated
horrors. We shall see that it is natural--the death of this woman who,
if she had not come to her end by poison, would have been broken by the
excess of misfortune with which she was surrounded. The author has seen
this. His book would not be read if he had done otherwise, if, in order
to show where an education as perilous as that of Madame Bovary can
lead, he had not been prodigal with the fascinating images and the
powerful tableaux for which he is reproached.
M. Flaubert constantly sets forth the superiority of the husband over
the wife, and what superiority, if you please? that of simple duty
fulfilled, while the wife was straying from hers. Here she is, fixed by
the bent of this bad education; here she is, gone out after the scene of
the ball, with the young boy, Léon, as inexperienced as herself. She
coquets with him but does not dare to go further; nothing happens. Then
comes Rodolphe who takes the woman to himself. After looking at her for
a moment, he said: This woman is all right. She will be easy prey,
because she is light-minded and inexperienced. As to the fall, will you
re-read pages 42, 43 and 44. I have only a word to say about this scene
and that is: there are no details, no descriptions, no image that can
trouble the senses; a single word indicates the fall: "She abandoned
herself." I pray you to have the goodness to read again the details of
the fall of Clarissa Harlowe, which I have not heard decried as a bad
book. M. Flaubert has substituted Rodolphe for Lovelace, and Emma for
Clarissa. If you will compare the two authors and the two books you will
appreciate the situation.
But I will return here to the indignation of the Government Attorney.
He is shocked that remorse does not immediately follow the fall, and
that in the place of expressing bitterness, she said with satisfaction:
"I have a lover!" But the author would not be true, if he made the
enchanting draught seem bitter while it still touched the lips. He who
wrote as the Attorney understands might be moral, but he would be saying
what is not in nature. No, it is not at the first moment of a fault
that the sentiment of fault is awakened; otherwise, it would not be
committed. No, it is not at the moment when she is under a delusion that
intoxicates her that a woman can be averted from this intoxication even
by the immensity of the fault she has committed. She feels only the
intoxication; she goes back to her home happy, sparkling, and singing in
her heart: "I have a lover!" But can this last long? You have read pages
424 and 425. On both pages, and if you please, to page 428, the
sentiment of disgust with her lover is not yet manifest; but she is
already under the impression of fear and uneasiness. She thinks, weighs
the question, and believes that she does not wish to abandon Rodolphe:
"Something stronger than herself forced her to him; so much so, that one
day, seeing her come unexpectedly he frowned as one put out.
"'What is the matter with you?' she said, 'Are you ill? Tell me!'
"At last he declared with a serious air that her visits were becoming
imprudent--that she was compromising herself.
"Gradually Rodolphe's fears took possession of her. At first, love had
intoxicated her, and she had thought of nothing beyond. But now that he
was indispensable to her life, she feared to lose anything of this, or
even that it should be disturbed. When she came back from his house, she
looked all about her, anxiously watching every form that passed in the
horizon, and every village window from which she could be seen. She
listened for steps, cries, the noise of the ploughs, and she stopped
short, white, and trembling more than the aspen leaves swaying
overhead."
You see unmistakably that she was not deceived; she felt clearly that
there was something about it of which she had not dreamed. Let us take
pages 433 and 434 and you will be still further convinced:
"When the night was rainy, they took refuge in the consulting-room,
between the cart-shed and the stable. She lighted one of the kitchen
candles that she had hidden behind the books. Rodolphe settled down
there as if at home. The sight of the library, of the bureau, of the
whole apartment, in fine, excited his merriment, and he could not
refrain from making jokes about Charles which rather embarrassed Emma.
She would have liked to see him more serious and even on occasions more
dramatic; as, for example, when she thought she heard a noise of
approaching steps in the alley.
"'Some one is coming!' she said
"He blew out the light.
"'Have you your pistols?'
"'Why?'
"'Why, to defend yourself,' replied Emma.
"'From your husband? Oh, poor devil!'"
And Rodolphe finished his phrase with a gesture which signified: I could
crush him with a fillip.
She was amazed at his bravery, although she felt that there was a sort
of indelicacy and naïve grossness about it that was scandalizing.
"Rodolphe reflected a good deal on the affair of the pistols. If she had
spoken seriously, it was very ridiculous, he thought, even odious; for
he had no reason to hate the good Charles, not being what is called
devoured by jealousy; and on this subject Emma had treated him to a
lecture, which he did not think in the best taste.
"Besides, she was growing very sentimental. She had insisted on
exchanging miniatures; they had cut handfuls of hair, and now she was
asking for a ring--a real wedding-ring, in sign of an eternal union. She
often spoke to him of the evening chimes, of the voices of nature. Then
she talked to him of her mother--hers! and of his mother--his!
"Finally she wearied him."
Then, on page 453:
"He had no longer, as formerly, words so gentle that they made her cry,
nor passionate caresses that made her mad; so that their great love,
which engrossed her life, seemed to lessen beneath her like the water of
a stream absorbed into its channel, and she could see the bed of it. She
would not believe it; she redoubled in tenderness, and Rodolphe
concealed his indifference less and less.
"She did not know whether she regretted yielding to him, or whether, she
did not wish, on the contrary, to enjoy him the more. The humiliation of
feeling herself weak was turning to rancour, tempered by their
voluptuous pleasures. It was not affection; it was like a continual
seduction. He subjugated her; she almost feared him."
And you are afraid, Mr. Government Attorney, that young women might read
this! I am less frightened, less timid than you. On my own personal
account, I can admirably understand a father of a family saying to his
daughter: Young lady, if your heart, your conscience, if religious
sentiment and the voice of duty are not sufficient to make you walk in
the right path, look, my child, look well at the weariness, the
suffering, the grief and desolation attending the woman who seeks
happiness outside her home! This language would not wound you in the
mouth of a father, would it? M. Flaubert has said nothing but this; he
has made a painting most true, and most powerful, of what the woman who
dreams of finding happiness outside her house immediately discovers.
But let us go on and we shall come to all the adventures of the
disillusion. You show me the caresses of Léon on page 60. Alas! she
will soon pay the ransom of adultery, and that ransom you will find
terrible, in some pages farther on in the book you condemn. She sought
happiness in adultery, poor unfortunate one! And she found, besides the
disgust and fatigue that the monotony of marriage can bring to the woman
who does not walk in the path of duty, the disillusion and the scorn of
the man to whom she has given herself. Was any of this scorn lacking in
the book? Oh, no! and you cannot deny it, for the book is under your
eyes. Rodolphe, who has shown himself so vile, gives to her a last proof
of egoism and cowardice. She has said to him: "Take me! Carry me away!
I am stifling; I can no longer breathe in my husband's house, to which I
have brought shame and misfortune." He hesitates; she insists. Finally,
he promises, and the next day she receives a terrible letter under which
she falls crushed and annihilated. She is taken ill and is dying. The
number you are consulting shows you all the convulsions of a soul at war
with itself, which perhaps could be led back to duty by an excess of
suffering, but unfortunately she meets a boy with whom she had played
when she was inexperienced. This is the movement of the romance, and
then comes the expiation.
But the Government Attorney stops me and asks: Although it may be true
that the purpose of the book is good from one end to the other, could
you allow such obscene details as those that have been brought forward?
Very certainly I could not allow such details, but where have I allowed
them? Where are they? I now arrive at the passages most condemned. I
will say no more of the adventure in the cab. This Court has heard
enough with regard to that; I come to the passages that you have pointed
out as contrary to public morals and which form a certain number of
pages in the December number. And, in order to pull away all the
scaffolding of your accusation, there is only one thing to be done: to
restore what precedes and what follows your quotations, in a word, to
substitute the text complete as opposed to your cutting.
At the bottom of page 72, Léon, after making an agreement with Homais,
the chemist, goes to the Hôtel de Boulogne; the chemist goes there to
find him.
"Emma was no longer there. She had just gone in a fit of anger. She
detested him now. This failing to keep their rendezvous seemed to her an
insult.
"Then, growing calmer, she at length discovered that she had no doubt
calumniated him. But the disparaging of those we love always alienates
us from them to some extent. We must not touch our idols; the gilt
sticks to our fingers."
Great heavens! And it is for such lines as I have been reading to you
that we are dragged before you. Listen now:
"They gradually came to talking more frequently of matters outside their
love, and in the letters that Emma wrote him she spoke of flowers,
verses, the moon and the stars, naïve resources of a waning passion
striving to keep itself alive by all external aids. She was constantly
promising herself a profound felicity on her next journey. Then she
confessed to herself that she felt nothing extraordinary. This
disappointment quickly gave way to a new hope, and Emma returned to him
more inflamed, more eager than ever. She undressed brutally, tearing off
the thin laces of her corset that nestled around her hips like a gliding
snake. She went on tip-toe, barefooted, to see once more that the door
was closed; then, pale, serious, and without speaking, with one movement
she threw herself upon his breast with a long shudder." You have
stopped here, Mr. Attorney; permit me to continue:
"Yet there was upon that brow covered with cold drops, on those
quivering lips, in those wild eyes, in the strain of those arms,
something vague and dreary that seemed to Léon to glide between them
subtly as if to separate them."
You call this lascivious colour, you say that this gives a taste for
adultery, you say that these pages excite and arouse the senses,--that
they are lascivious pages! But death is in these pages! You did not
think of that, Mr. Attorney, and were simply frightened to find such
words as _corset, clothing which falls off_, etc.; and you attach
yourself to these three or four words, such as corset and falling
clothing. Do you wish me to show you that corsets can appear in a
classic book, a very classic book? I shall give myself the pleasure of
so doing, presently.
"She undressed herself ..." [ah! Mr. Government Attorney, how badly you
have understood this passage!] "she undressed hastily [poor thing],
tearing off the thin laces of her corset that nestled around her hips
like a gliding snake; then pale, serious, and without speaking, with one
movement she threw herself upon his breast with a long shudder.... There
was upon that brow covered with cold drops ... in the strain of those
arms something vague and dreary...."
We must ask here where the lascivious colour is? and where is the severe
colour? and ask if the senses of the young girl into whose hands this
book might fall, could be aroused, excited--as she might by reading a
classic of classics, which I shall cite presently, and which has been
reprinted a thousand times without any prosecution, public or royal,
following it. Is there anything analogous in what I am going to read
you? Is there not, on the contrary, a horror of vice that this
"something dreary glides in between them to separate them?" Let us
continue, I pray:
"He did not dare to question her; but, seeing her so skilled, she must
have passed, he thought, through every experience of suffering and of
pleasure. What had once charmed now frightened him a little. Besides,
he rebelled against his absorption, daily more marked by her
personality. He begrudged Emma this constant victory. He even strove
not to love her; then, when he heard the creaking of her boots, he
turned coward, like drunkards at the sight of strong drinks."
What is lascivious there?
And then, take the last paragraph:
"One day, when they had parted early and she was returning alone along
the boulevard, she saw the walls of her convent; then she sat down on a
form in the shade of the elm-trees. How calm that time had been! How she
longed for the ineffable sentiments of love that she had tried to figure
to herself out of books! The first month of her marriage, her rides in
the wood, the viscount that waltzed, and Lagardy singing, all repassed
before her eyes. And Léon suddenly appeared to her as far off as the
others.
"'Yet I love him,' she said to herself."
Do not forget this, Mr. Attorney, when you judge the thought of the
author, when you wish to find absolutely lascivious colour where I can
only find an excellent book.
"She was not happy--she never had been. Whence came this insufficiency
of life--this instantaneous turning to decay of everything on which she
leant?"
Is that lascivious?
"But if there were somewhere a being strong and beautiful, a valiant
nature, full at once of exaltation and refinement, a poet's heart in
angel's form, a lyre with sounding chords ringing out elegiac
epithalamia to heaven, why, perchance, should she not find him? Ah! how
impossible! Besides, nothing was worth the trouble of seeking it;
everything was a lie. Every smile hid a yawn of boredom, every joy a
curse, all pleasure satiety, and the sweetest kisses left upon your lips
only the unattainable desire for a greater delight.
"A metallic clang droned through the air, and four strokes were heard
from the convent-clock. Four o'clock! And it seemed to her that she had
been there on that form an eternity. But an infinity of passions may be
contained in a minute, like a crowd in a small space."
It is not necessary to look at the end of the book to find what is in it
from one end to the other. I have read the incriminated passage without
adding a word, to defend a work which defends itself through itself. Let
us continue leading from this same incriminated passage, looking at it
from a moral point of view:
"Madame was in her room, which no one entered. She stayed there all day
long, torpid, half dressed, and from time to time burning Turkish
pastilles which she had bought at Rouen in an Algerian's shop. In order
not to have at night this sleeping man stretched at her side, by dint of
manoeuvering, she at least succeeded in banishing him to the second
floor, while she read till morning extravagant books, full of pictures
of orgies and thrilling situations. Often, seized with fear, she cried
out, and Charles hurried to her.
"'Oh, go away!' she would say.
"Or at other times, consumed more ardently than ever by that inner flame
to which adultery added fuel, panting, tremulous, all desire, she threw
open her window, breathed in the cold air, shook loose in the wind her
masses of hair, too heavy, and gazing upon the stars, longed for some
princely love. She thought of him, of Léon. She would then have given
anything for a single one of those meetings that surfeited her.
"Those were her gala days. She wished them to be sumptuous, and when he
alone could not pay the expenses, she made up the deficit liberally,
which happened almost every time. He tried to make her understand that
they would be quite as comfortable somewhere else, in a smaller hotel,
but she always found some objection."
You see all this is very simple when one reads the whole; but in
cuttings like those of the Government Attorney, the smallest word
becomes a mountain.