Will you condemn it in the name of religious sentiment?  No, for this sentiment you see personified in the curate Bournisien, a priest as grotesque as the apothecary, believing only in physical suffering, never in moral, and little more than a materialist.

Will you condemn it in the name of the author’s conscience?  I know not what the author thinks, but in chapter 10, the only philosophical one of his book, I read the following: 

“There is always after the death of any one a kind of stupefaction; so difficult is it to grasp this advent of nothingness and to resign ourselves to believe in it.”

This is not a cry of unbelief, but it is at least a cry of scepticism.  Without doubt it is difficult to comprehend and believe it, but why this stupefaction which manifest’s itself at death?  Why?  Because this surprise is something that is a mystery, because it is difficult to comprehend and judge, although one must resign himself to it.  And as for me, I say that if death is the beginning of annihilation, that if the devoted husband feels his love increase on learning of the adulteries of his wife, that if opinion is represented by a grotesque being, that if religious sentiment is represented by a ridiculous priest, one person alone is right, and that is Emma Bovary,—­Messalina was right against Juvenal.

This is the conclusion of the book, drawn not by the author, but by a man who reflects and goes to the depths of things, by a man who has sought in this book for a person who could rule this woman.  There is none there.  The only person who ruled was Madame Bovary.  It is necessary to seek elsewhere than in the book; we must look to Christian morals, which are the foundation of modern civilization.  By this standard all explains itself, all becomes clear.

In its name the adulteress is stigmatized, condemned, not because her act is an imprudence, exposing her to disillusions and regrets, but because it is a crime against the family.  You stigmatize and condemn suicide, not because it is a foolish thing (the fool is not responsible), not because it is a cowardly act (for it sometimes requires a certain physical courage), but because it is a scorn of duty in the life we are living, and the cry of unbelief in the life to come.

This code of morals stigmatizes realistic literature, not because it paints the passions:  hatred, vengeance, love—­the world sees but the surface and art should paint them—­but not paint them without bridle, without limits.  Art without rules is not art.  It is like a woman who discards all clothing.  To impose upon art the one rule of public decency is not to subject it, not to dishonor it.  One grows great only by rule.  These, gentlemen, are the principles which we profess, this the doctrine which we defend with conscience.

* * * * *

Plea for the Defense, by

M. SENARD