To ask the judges to read an entire romance would be asking much; but we are before judges who love truth, who desire the truth, and who to learn it would not shrink from any fatigue.  We are before judges who desire justice and desire it energetically, and who will read, without any kind of hesitation, what we beg them to read.  I said to M. Flaubert:  “Send this immediately to the printers, and put my name at the bottom beside yours:  SENARD, Counsel.”  They had begun the printing; arrangements were made for a hundred copies for our own use; the work went on with extreme rapidity, they were working day and night on it, when the order came to us to discontinue the printing, not of a book, but of a pamphlet in which was the incriminated work together with explanatory notes.  We appealed to the office of the Attorney-General—­who informed us that the prohibition was absolute and could not be removed.

Well, so be it!  We should have published the book with our notes and observation’s; but now I ask you, gentlemen, if your first reading has left you in doubt, to give it a second reading.  You will willingly do this, as you desire the truth; and you could not be among those who, when two lines of a man’s writing is brought to them, are sure to make it fit any condition that may be.  You do not wish a man to be judged upon a few cuttings more or less skilfully made.  You would not allow that; you would not deprive him of the ordinary means of defense.  Well, you have the book, and although it may be less easy than you might wish, you will make your own divisions, observations, and meanings, because you desire the truth, because truth is necessary for the basis of your judgment, and truth will come from a serious examination of the book.

However, I cannot stop here.  The Public Minister has attacked the book, and it is necessary for me to defend it, to complete the quotations he has made, and show the nothingness of the accusation against each incriminated passage; that will be all my defense.

I shall not attempt, assuredly, to place myself in opposition to the exalted, animated, pathetic appreciation with which the Public Attorney has surrounded all that he said, by striving for appreciation of the same kind; the defense would have no right to make use of such a manner of procedure; it must content itself with citing the text, such as it is.

And in the first place, I declare that nothing is more false than what has just been said about lascivious colour.  Lascivious colour!  Where can you find it?  My client has depicted in Madame Bovary what sort of woman?  My God! it is sad to say, and yet it is true, a young girl, born, as they nearly all are, honest; at least the greater number are honest, but very fragile, when education, instead of fortifying them, softens them and turns them into bad paths.  He has depicted a young girl.  Is she of perverse nature?  No, but of an impressionable nature, susceptible of exaltation.