"And do not ask me, Christians, in what way this great change of
pleasure into punishment will come about. The thing is proved by the
Scriptures. It is Truth who has said it, it is the All-Powerful who has
made it so. And sometimes, if you will look at the nature of the
passions to which you abandon your heart, you will easily comprehend
that they may become an intolerable punishment. They all have in
themselves cruel pain, disgust and bitterness. They all have an infinity
which is angered by not being able to be satisfied. There are transports
of rage mingled in all of them which degenerates into a kind of fury not
less painful than unreasonable. Love, if I may be permitted so to name
it in this guise, has its uncertainties, its violent agitations, its
irresolute resolutions and an abyss of jealousies."
And further:
"Ah! What, then, is easier than making of our passions an insupportable
pain or sin, when, if we cut out, as is very just, the little sweetness
through which they lead us, there is left of them only the cruel
disquiet and bitterness with which they abound? Our sins are against us,
our sins are upon us, our sins are in the midst of us; like an arrow
piercing our body, an insupportable weight upon our head, a poison
devouring our entrails."
Is not all that you have just listened to designed to show you the
bitterness of passion? I leave you this book, lined and thumb-marked by
the studious man who has found his thought there. And that man, who has
been inspired from a source of this kind, who has written of adultery in
the terms you have listened to, is prosecuted for outrage of public and
religious morals!
A few lines still upon the _woman sinner_, and you will see how
M. Flaubert, having decided to paint this ardour, understood taking
inspiration from this model:
"But, punished for our error, without being deceived by it, we seek in
change the remedy for our scorn; we wander from object to object, and
if, finally there is some one who holds us, it is not because we are
content with our choice, but because we are bound by our inconstancy."
* * * * *
"All appeared to her empty, false, disgusting in these creatures: far
from finding there those first charms which her heart had had so much
difficulty in defending, she saw in them now only frivolity, danger and
vanity."
* * * * *
"I will not speak of an entanglement of passion; what fears there are
that the mystery of it cannot dispel! what measures to keep on the side
of well-being and pride! what eyes to shun! what watchers to deceive!
what returns to fear from those whom one chooses for their aids and
confidants in their passion! what indignities to suffer from him,
perhaps, for whom one has sacrificed honour and liberty, and of whom one
dare not complain! To all this, add those cruel moments when passion,
less lively, leaves us to choose between falling back upon ourselves and
feeling all the humility of our position, and those moments where the
heart, born for more solid pleasures, leaves us with our own idols and
finds its punishment in its own disgust and inconstancy. Profane world!
if there is in you that felicity that is so much vaunted, favor your
adorers with it nor punish them for the faith they have added so lightly
to your promises."
Let me say to you here: when a man in the silence of the night,
meditates upon the causes of enticement for woman, when he finds them in
her education and, putting aside personal observation, for the sake of
expressing his thoughts, matures them at the sources I have indicated,
not allowing himself to use his pen except from inspiration of Bossuet
and Massillon, permit me to ask you if there is a word to express my
surprise, my grief, on seeing this man dragged into Court--on account of
some passages in his book, and precisely for the truest and most
elevated ideas that he was able to bring together! And I pray you not to
forget this in relation to the charge of outrage against religious
morals! And then, if you will permit me, I will put in opposition to all
this, under your very eyes, what I myself call attacking the moral, that
is to say, satisfaction of the senses without bitterness, without those
large drops of cold sweat which fall from the brow of those who give
themselves over to it; and I will not quote to you from licentious books
in which the authors have sought to arouse the senses; I will quote from
only one book--which is given as a prize in colleges, but whose author's
name I ask leave to withhold until after I have read you a passage from
it. Here is the passage: I will ask you to pass the volume. It is a copy
that was given to a college student as a prize. I prefer you to take
this copy rather than M. Flaubert's:
"The next day I was received into her apartment. There I felt all that
voluptuousness carries with it. The room was filled with the most
agreeable perfumes. She lay upon a bed which was enclosed in garlands
of flowers. She appeared to be lying there languishingly. She extended
her hand to me and made me sit beside her. In all, even in the veil
which covered her face, there was a charm. I could see the form of her
beautiful body. A simple cloth which moved as she moved allowed me at
one time to see, and at another to lose sight of, her ravishing beauty."
A simple cloth when it was extended over a dead body appeared to you a
lascivious image; here it is extended over a living woman:
"She noticed that my eyes were occupied, and when she saw them inflamed,
the cloth seemed to open itself away from her; I saw all the treasures
of a divine beauty. At this moment she took my hand; my eyes were
wandering. There is only my dear Ardasire, I cry out, who can be as
beautiful; but I swear to the gods that my fidelity.... She threw
herself on my neck and drew me into her arms. Suddenly the room became
darkened; her veil opened and she gave me a kiss. I was beside myself; a
flame started suddenly through my veins and aroused all my senses. The
idea of Ardasire was far from me. She remained to me only as a
memory ... there appeared to me but one thought.... I was going.... I
was going to prefer this one even to her. Already my hands had wandered
to her breasts; they ran rapidly everywhere; love showed itself only in
its fury; it hurried on to victory; a moment more and Ardasire could not
defend herself."
Who, now, has written that? It is not the author of _The New Héloise_,
it is the President, Montesquieu! Here is no bitterness, no disgust, but
all is sacrificed to literary beauty, and they give it as a prize to
pupils in rhetoric, without doubt to serve as a model in the
amplifications and descriptions that they are required to
write. Montesquieu described in his Persian Letters a scene which could
not even be read. It concerns a woman placed between two men who dispute
over her. This woman, placed between two men, has dreams--which appear
to the author very agreeable.
Shall we sum up, Mr. Attorney? Or is it necessary for me to quote you
Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his _Confessions_, and some others? No, I will
only say to the judges that if, on account of his description of the
carriage in _The Double Misunderstanding_, M. Mérimée had been
prosecuted, he would have been acquitted immediately. One sees in his
book only a work of art of great literary beauty. One would no more
condemn it than he would condemn paintings or statuary, which is not
content with representing all the beauties of the body, but wishes to
add ardour and passion. I will follow it no farther; I ask you to
recognise the fact that M. Flaubert has not weighted his images and has
done only one thing: he has touched with a firm hand the scene of
degradation. At each line of his book he has brought out the
disillusion, and instead of ending it with something charming, he has
undertaken to show us that this woman, after meeting scorn, abandonment,
and ruin of her house, comes to a frightful death. In a word, I can only
repeat what I said at the beginning of this plea, that M. Flaubert is
the author of a good book, a book which aims at the excitation of virtue
by arousing a horror of vice.
I will now look into his outrage against religion. An outrage against
religion committed by M. Flaubert! And in what respect, if you please?
The Government Attorney has thought he found in him a sceptic. I can
assure the Government Attorney that he is deceived. I am not here to
make a profession of faith, I am here only to defend a book, and for
that reason I shall limit myself to a simple word. Now as to the book, I
defy the Government Attorney to find in it anything that resembles an
outrage against religion. You have seen how religion was introduced in
Emma's education, and how this religion, false in a thousand ways, could
not hold Emma from the bent that carried her astray. Would you know in
what kind of language M. Flaubert speaks of religion? Listen to some
lines that I take from the first number, pages 231, 232 and 233:
"One evening when the window was open, and she, sitting by it, had been
watching Lestiboudois, the beadle, trimming the box, she suddenly heard
the Angelus ringing.
"It was the beginning of April, when the primroses are in bloom, and a
warm wind blows over the flower-beds newly turned, and the gardens, like
women, seem to be getting ready for the summer fêtes. Through the bars
of the arbour and away beyond, the river could be seen in the fields,
meandering through the grass in wandering curves. The evening vapors
rose between the leafless poplars, touching their outlines with a violet
tint, paler and more transparent than a subtle gauze caught athwart
their branches. In the distance cattle moved about; neither their steps
nor their lowing could be heard; and the bell, still ringing through the
air, kept up its peaceful lamentation.
"With this repeated tinkling the thoughts of the young woman lost
themselves in old memories of her youth and school-days. She remembered
the great candlesticks that rose above the vases full of flowers on the
altar, and the tabernacle with its small columns. She would have liked
to be once more lost in the long line of white veils, marked off here
and there by the stiff black hoods of the good sisters bending over
their prie-Dieu."
This is the language in which his religious sentiment is expressed. And
yet we have understood from the Government Attorney that scepticism
reigned in M. Flaubert's book from one end to the other. Where, I pray
you, have you found this scepticism?