“Then the smell, for the too subtle and voluptuous perfumes of evening and the springtime in the depth of the woods, for flowers received in the morning and all through the day, and breathed in with so much pleasure!

“Upon the lips, for what they have pronounced that was too confused or too open; for what they did not reply at certain moments or what they have not revealed to certain persons; for what they have sung in solitude that was too melodious and too full of tears; for their inarticulate murmur and for their silence!

“Upon the neck, in the place of on the breast, for the ardor of desire according to the consecrated expression (propter ardorem libidinis); yes, for the grief in affection and the rivalry, for too much anguish in human tenderness, for the tears which are suffocated in a voiceless throat, for all that goes to wound the heart and break it!

“Upon the hands also, for having seized a hand which was not bound to holiness; for having received too burning tears; perhaps for having begun to write and for finishing a response not lawful!

“Upon the feet, for not having fled, for not having been satisfied with long, solitary walks, for not having been weary soon enough in the midst of temptations which were ever beginning anew!”

You did not prosecute that.  Here are two men who, each in his own sphere, has taken the same thing and who have, according to his own idea, added the sin, the fault.  Can it be that you make an indictment for simply translating the formula of the ritual:  Quidquid deliquisti per oculos, per aurem, etc.?

M. Flaubert has done just what M. Sainte-Beuve did, without plagiarizing.  He has made use of a right which belongs to any writer, to add to what another has said and complete the subject.  The last scene of the romance of Madame Bovary has been made a complete study of this kind from religious documents.  M. Flaubert has taken the scene of the extreme unction from a book which a venerable ecclesiastic, one of his friends, lent to him; this same friend has read the scene and been moved to tears, not imagining that the majesty of religion was in any way offended.  The book is entitled:  An historic, dogmatic, moral, liturgical and canonical explanation of the catechism, with an answer to the objections drawn from science against religion, by the Abbe Ambroise Guillois, curate of Notre-Dame-du-Pre, 6th edition, etc., a work approved by His Eminence the Cardinal Gousset, N.N.S.S. the Bishops and Archbishops of Mans, of Tours, of Bordeaux, of Cologne, etc., vol.  III., printed at Mans, by Charles Monnoyer, 1851.  Now, you shall see in this book, as you saw just now in Bossuet’s, the principles, and, in a certain way, the text of the passages which the Government has condemned.  It is no longer M. Sainte-Beuve, an artist, a literary rhapsodist, whom I am quoting; we now listen to the Church itself: