The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert

"The priest declined very politely. He had come for his umbrella, that he had forgotten the other day at the Ernemont convent, and after asking Madame Lefrançois to have it sent to him at the presbytery in the evening, he left for the church, from which the Angelus was ringing.

"When the chemist no longer heard the noise of his boots along the square, he thought the priest's behavior just now very unbecoming. This refusal to take any refreshment seemed to him the most odious hypocrisy; all priests tippled on the sly, and were trying to bring back the days of the tithe.

"The landlady took up the defense of her curé.

"'Besides, he could double up four men like you over his knee. Last year he helped our people to bring in the straw; he carried as many as six trusses at once, he is so strong.'

"'Bravo!' said the chemist. 'Now just send your daughters to confess to fellows with such a temperament! I, if I were the Government, I'd have the priests bled once a month. Yes, Madame Lefrançois, every month—a good phlebotomy, in the interests of the police and morals.'

"'Be quiet, Monsieur Homais. You are an infidel; you've no religion.'

"The chemist answered: 'I have a religion, my religion, and I even have more than all these others with their mummeries and their juggling. I adore God, on the contrary. I believe in the Supreme Being, in a Creator, whatever he may be. I care little who has placed us here below to fulfill our duties as citizens and fathers of families; but I don't need to go to church to kiss silver plates, and fatten, out of my pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live better than we do. For one can know him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the eternal vault like the ancients. My God! mine is the God of Socrates, of Franklin, of Voltaire, and Béranger! I am for the profession of faith of the 'Savoyard Vicar,' and the immortal principles of '89! And I can't admit of an old boy of a God who takes walks in his garden with a cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three days; things absurd in themselves, and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws, Which proves to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in torpid ignorance, in which they would fain engulf the people with them.'

"He ceased looking round for an audience, for in his bubbling over the chemist had for a moment fancied himself in the midst of the town council. But the landlady no longer heeded him; she was listening to a distant rolling."

What is this? A dialogue, a scene such as occurred each time that Homais had occasion to speak of priests.

There is something better in the last passage of page 271:

"Public attention was distracted by the appearance of Monsieur Bournisien, who was going across the market with the holy oil.

"Homais, as we due to his principles, compared priests to ravens attracted by the odour of death. The sight of an ecclesiastic was personally disagreeable to him, for the cassock made him think of the shroud, and he detested the one from some fear of the other."

Our old friend, he who lent us the catechism, was very happy over this phrase; he said to us: "It is a true hit; it is indeed the portrait of a priestophobe whom the cassock makes think of a shroud, and who holds one in execration from a little fear of the other." He was impious, and he profaned the cassock a little through impiety, perhaps, but much more because he was made to think of a shroud.

Permit me to make a résumé of all this. I am defending a man who, if he had met a literary criticism upon the form of his book, or upon certain expressions, or on too much detail, upon one point or another, would have accepted that literary criticism with the best heart in the world. But to find himself accused of an outrage against morals and religion! M. Flaubert has not recovered from it; and he protests here before you with all the astonishment and all the energy of which he is capable against such an accusation.

You are not of the sort to condemn books upon certain lines, you are of the sort to judge after reflection, to judge of the way of putting a work, and you will put this question with which I began my plea and with which I shall end it: Does the reading of such a book give a love of vice, or inspire a horror of it? Does not a punishment so terrible drive one to virtue and encourage it? The reading of this book cannot produce upon you an impression other than it has produced upon us, namely: that the work is excellent as a whole, and that the details in it are irreproachable. All classic literature authorizes the painting of scenes like these we are passing upon.

With this understanding, we might have taken one for a model, which we have not done; we have imposed upon ourselves a sobriety which we ask you to take into account. If, as is possible, M. Flaubert has overstepped the bound he placed for himself, in one word or another, I have only to remind you that this is a first work, but I should then have to tell you that his error was simply one of self-deception, and was without damage to public morals. And in making him come into Court—him, whom you know a little now by his book, him whom you already love a little and will love more, I am sure, when you know him better—is enough of a punishment, a punishment already too cruel. And now it is for you to decide. You have already judged the book as a whole and in its details; it is not possible for you to hesitate!

* * * * *

THE DECISION

The Court has given audience for a part of the last week to the debate of the suit brought against MM. Léon Laurent-Pichat and Auguste-Alexis Pillet, the first the director, the second the printer of a periodical publication called the Revue de Paris, and M. Gustave Flaubert, a man of letters, all three implicated: 1st, Laurent-Pichat, for having, in 1856, published in the numbers of the 1st and the 15th of December of the Revue de Paris, some fragments of a romance entitled, Madame Bovary and, notably, divers fragments contained in pages 73, 77, 78, 272, 273, has committed the misdemeanor of outraging public and religious morals and established customs; 2nd, Pillet and Flaubert are similarly guilty; Pillet in printing them, for they were published, and Flaubert for writing and sending to Laurent-Pichat for publication, the fragments of the romance entitled, Madame Bovary as above designated, for aiding and abetting, with knowledge, Laurent-Pichat in the facts which have been prepared, in facilitating and consummating the above-mentioned misdemeanor, and of thus rendering themselves accomplices in the misdeameanor provided for by articles 1 and 8 of the law of May 17, 1819, and 59 and 60 of the Penal Code.

M. PINARD, substitute, has sustained the prosecution.

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."