The COURT, after hearing the defense, presented by M. SENARD for
M. FLAUBERT, M. DEMAREST for PICHAT, and M. FAVÉRIE for the PRINTER,
has set for audience this day (Feb. 7) for pronouncing judgment, which
is rendered in the following terms:
"_Be it known_, that Laurent-Pichat, Gustave Flaubert and Pillet are
charged with having committed the misdemeanor of an outrage against
public and religious morals and established customs; the first as
author, in publishing in the periodical publication entitled the _Revue
de Paris_ of which he is the manager-proprietor, and in the numbers of
the 1st and 15th of October, the 1st and 15th of November and the 1st
and 15th of December, 1856, a romance entitled _Madame Bovary_, Gustave
Flaubert and Pillet as accomplices, the one for furnishing the
manuscript, and the other for printing the said romance;
"_Be it known_, that the particularly marked passages of the romance
with which we have to do, which include nearly 300 pages, are contained,
according to the terms of the ordinance of dismissal before the Court of
Correction, in pages 73, 77 and 78 (of the number of the 1st of
December), and 271, 272, 273 (of the 15th of December number, 1856);
"_Be it known_, that the incriminated passages, viewed abstractively and
isolatedly, present effectively either expressions, or images, or
pictures which good taste reproves and which are of a nature to make an
attack upon legitimate and honorable susceptibilities;
"_Be it known_, that the same observations can justly be applied to
other passages not defined by the ordinance of dismissal, and which, in
the first place seem to present an exposition of theories which would at
least be contrary to the good customs and institutions which are the
basis of our society, as well as to a respect for the most august
ceremonies of divine worship;
"_Be it known_, that, from these diverse titles, the work brought before
the Court merits severe blame, since the mission of literature should be
to ornament and recreate the mind by raising the intelligence and
purifying manners, rather than by showing the disgust of vice in
offering a picture of disorder which may exist in our society;
"_Be it known_, that the defendants, and particularly Gustave Flaubert,
energetically denied the charge brought against them, setting forth that
the romance submitted to the judgment of the Court had an eminently
moral aim; that the author had principally in view the exposing of
dangers which result from an education not appropriate to the sphere in
which one lives, and that, pursuant to this idea, he has shown the
woman, the principal personage in the romance, aspiring towards the
world and a society for which she was not made, unhappy in her modest
condition where she was placed by fate, forgetting first her duties as a
mother, afterward lacking in her duties as a wife, introducing
successively into her house adultery and ruin, and ending miserably by
suicide, after passing through all degrees of the most complete
degradation, having even descended to theft;
"_Be it known_, that this data, moral without doubt in principle, must
be completed in its development by a certain severity of language and by
a reserve directed especially towards that which touches the exposition
of the pictures and situations which the author has employed in placing
it before the eyes of the public;
"_Be it known_, that it is not allowed, under pretext of painting
character or local colour, to reproduce the facts, words, and gestures
of the digressions of the personages which a writer gives himself the
mission to paint; that a like system, applied to works of the mind as
well as to productions of the fine arts, would lead to a realism which
would be the reverse of the beautiful and the good, and which, bringing
forth works equally offensive to the eye and to the mind, would commit a
continual outrage against public morals and good manners;
"_Be it known_, that there are limits which literature, even the
lightest, should not pass, and of which Gustave Flaubert and the
co-indicted have not taken sufficient account;
"_Be it known_, that the work of which Flaubert is the author, is a work
which appears to be long and seriously elaborated, from a literary point
of view and as a study of character; that the passages coming under the
ordinance for dismissal, as reprehensible as they may be, are few in
number as compared with the extent of the work; that these passages,
either in the ideas they expose, or in the situations they represent,
bring out as a whole the characters which the author wished to paint,
although exaggerated and impregnated with a vulgar realism often
shocking;
"_Be it known_, that Gustave Flaubert affirms his respect for good
manners, and all that attaches itself to religious morals; that it does
not appear that his book has been written like certain other books, with
the sole aim of giving satisfaction to the sensual passions, to a spirit
of license and debauch, or of ridiculing things which should be held in
the respect of all;
"That he has done wrong only in losing sight of the rules which every
writer who respects himself ought never to lose sight of, or forget:
that literature, like art, in order to accomplish the good which it is
expected to produce ought only to be chaste and pure in its form and
expression;
"In the circumstances, _be it known_, that it is not sufficiently proven
that Pichat, Gustave Flaubert and Pillet are guilty of the misdemeanor
with which they are charged;
"The Court acquits them of the indictment brought against them, and
decrees a dismissal without costs."