And notice carefully one thing:  M. Flaubert is not the man who has painted a charming adultery for you, in order to arrive later with the Deus ex machina; no, you are carried too quickly on to the last page.  Adultery with him is only a series of torments, remorse and regret; and then he arrives at the final, frightful expiation.  It is excessive.  If M. Flaubert sins, it is through excess; and I will show you presently what is meant by this.  The expiation is not allowed to wait, and it is that which makes the book eminently moral and useful.  It does not promise the young woman some beautiful years at the end of which she can say:  after this, one is willing to die.  No! from the second day there is bitterness and disillusion.  The conclusion for morality is found in each line of the book.

This book is written with a power of observation to which the Government Attorney has rendered justice.  And it is here that I would call your attention to it, because if the accusation is without foundation, it must fall.  This book is written with a power truly remarkable for observing the smallest details.  An article in the Artiste, signed Flaubert, has served as yet another text for the accusation.  Let the Government Attorney note, first that this article is foreign to the indictment; then, that we will hold him innocent and moral in the eyes of this tribunal on one condition, which is, that he will have the goodness to read the entire article from the place of the cutting.

The most noticeable thing in M. Flaubert’s book is what some accounts have called a fidelity wholly Daguerreian in the reproduction of the type of things, and in the intimate nature of the thought of the human heart;—­and this reproduction becomes more powerful still by the magic of his style.  Now notice, that if he had applied this fidelity only to the scenes of degradation, you could say with reason:  the author has been pleased to paint the scenes of degradation with that power of description which is peculiarly his own.  From the first to the last page of his book, he keeps close to all the facts in Emma’s life, without any kind of reserve, from her infancy in her father’s house, to her education in the convent, sparing nothing.  And those of us who have read the book from beginning to end can say—­and this is a notable point which should put him in a favorable light with you, not only bringing him acquittal, but removing from him every kind of misunderstanding—­that when he comes to the difficult parts, precisely at the time of degradation, in place of doing as some classic authors have done, (as the Public Attorney knows full well, but whom he forgot when he wrote his address) a few pages of whose writings I have with me here, (not to read to you but for you to run through in Court—­and I might quote a few lines here presently), in place of doing as our great classic authors, our great masters have done, who never hesitate at description when they have come to the scene of