The enduring literary fame of Gustave Flaubert was established all at one go, in the course of a famous trial that simultaneously brought him success and scandal. In 1857, when Madame Bovary (translated 1881) was appearing in serial form, the imperial prosecutor accused Flaubert of publishing a novel offensive to public morality and religion. Madame Bovary was nothing less than the glorification of the "poésie de l'adultère" (poetry of adultery), and in the course of his indictment, the prosecutor repeatedly accused the author of painting "tableaux" of lascivity. Such charges may seem absurdly overblown to the modern reader, who will find little to object to in Flaubert's measured and sympathetic portrait of Emma Bovary's discontents and dalliances.

The France of the Second Empire (1852-1870), however, was the result of a coup d'état against the short-lived Second Republic, and the republican form of government in...