The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert Part 5

I wish my children to believe in one G.o.d, not a G.o.d in the abstractness of pantheism, but in a Supreme Being with whom they have relations.h.i.+p, to whom they are accustomed to pray, and who at once awes and fortifies them. This thought, you see, it is your belief as well as mine, is our strength in evil days, is our strength against what we call the world; the refuge; or better still, the strength of the weak. It is this thought which gives women that stability which makes them resigned to a thousand little things in life, which makes them carry all their suffering to G.o.d, and ask of Him grace to fulfill their duty. That religion, gentlemen, is the Christian religion, and it is that which establishes a relations.h.i.+p between G.o.d and man. Christianity, in placing a sort of intermediary power between G.o.d and ourselves, renders G.o.d more accessible, and communication with Him easier. That the Mother of Him who has made Himself the Saviour should receive the prayers of women, cannot affect, so far as I can see, purity, religious sanct.i.ty, or religious sentiment itself. But here is where the change begins. In order to accommodate a religion to all natures, all sorts of petty, miserable, paltry things are introduced. The pomp of the ceremonies, instead of being a true pomp which lays hold on the soul, often degenerates into a commerce in relics, medals, of little saints and Virgins. To what, gentlemen, do the minds of children, curious, ardent, and tender, lend themselves, especially the minds of young girls? To all these enfeebled, attenuated, miserable images of the religious spirit. They then take upon themselves little religious duties to put in practice, little devotions of tenderness, of love, and in the place of having in their soul the sentiment of G.o.d, the sentiment of duty, they abandon themselves to reveries, to little devices, to little devotions. And then comes the poesy, and then comes, it is very necessary to say it, a thousand thoughts of charity, of tenderness, of mystic love, a thousand forms which deceive young girls and sensualize religion. These poor children, naturally credulous and weak, take to all this poesy and reverie instead of attaching themselves to something more reasonable and severe. Whence it happens that you have very many strong devotees among women who are not religious at all. And when the wind blows them from the path where they ought to walk, in place of finding strength to combat it, they find only a kind of sensuality which bewilders them.

Ah! you have accused me of having confounded the religious element with sensualism, in the picture of modern society! Accuse rather the society in the midst of which we live, but do not accuse the man who cries with Bossuet: "Awake and be on thy guard against peril!" And say to the fathers of families: Take care! These are not good customs for your daughters; there is in all these mixtures of mysticism something which sensualises religion; say that, and you will speak the truth. It is for this that you accuse Flaubert; it is for this that I exalt his conduct.

Yes, he has given very good warning of the whole family of dangers arising from exaltation among young persons, who take upon themselves petty devotions instead of attaching themselves to a strong and severe religion which would sustain them in a day of weakness. And now you shall see whence comes the invention of the little sins "under the whisperings of the priest." Read page 30:

"She had read 'Paul and Virginia,' and she had dreamed of the little bamboo-house, the n.i.g.g.e.r Domingo, the dog Fidele, but above all the sweet friends.h.i.+p of some dear little brother, who seeks red fruit for you on trees taller than steeples, or who runs barefoot over the sand, bringing you a bird's nest."

Is this lascivious, gentlemen? Let us continue.

THE GOVERNMENT ATTORNEY:

I did not say that pa.s.sage was lascivious.

M. SENARD:

I ask your pardon, but it is precisely in this pa.s.sage that you found a lascivious phrase, and it was only by isolating it from what preceded and what followed that you could make it seem lascivious.

"Instead of attending to ma.s.s, she looked at the pious vignettes with their azure borders in her book, and she loved the sick lamb, the sacred heart pierced with sharp arrows, or the poor Jesus sinking beneath the cross he carries. She tried, by way of mortification, to eat nothing a whole day. She puzzled her head to find some vow to fulfill."

Do not forget this; when one invents little sins to confess and seeks some vow to fulfill, as you will find in the preceding line, evidently one has got ideas that are a little false from somewhere. And now I ask you if I have to discuss your pa.s.sage! I continue:

"In the evening, before prayers, there was some religious reading in the study. On week-nights it was some abstract of sacred history or the Lectures of the Abbe Frayssinous, and on Sundays pa.s.sages from the 'Genie du Christianism,' as a recreation. How she listened at first to the sonorous lamentations of its romantic melancholies re-echoing through the world and eternity! If her childhood had been spent in the shop-parlor of some business quarter, she might perhaps have opened her heart to those lyrical invasions of Nature, which usually come to us only through translation in books. But she knew the country too well; she knew the lowing of cattle, the milking, the plow. Accustomed to calm aspects of life, she turned, on the contrary, to those of excitement. She loved the sea only for the sake of its storms, and the green fields only when broken up by ruins. She wished to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desire of her heart, being of a temperament, more sentimental than artistic, looking for emotions not landscapes."

You shall see with what delicate precaution the author has introduced a saintly old maid, and how, with a purport of teaching religion, there is allowed to slip into the convent a new element, through the introduction of romance brought in by a stranger. Do not forget this when the subject of religious morals is under consideration.

"At the convent there was an old maid who came for a week each month to mend the linen. Patronized by the clergy, because she belonged to an ancient family of n.o.blemen ruined by the Revolution, she dined in the refectory at the table of the good sisters, and after the meal had a bit of chat with them before going back to her work. The girls often slipped out from the study to go and see her. She knew by heart the love-songs of the last century, and sang them in a low voice as she st.i.tched away. She told stories, gave them news, went errands in the town, and on the sly lent the big girls some novel, that she always carried in the pockets of her ap.r.o.n, and of which the good lady herself swallowed long chapters in the intervals of her work."

This is nothing but marvellous, speaking from a literary point of view, and absolution can but be granted a man who has written these admirable pa.s.sages as a warning against all perils of education of this kind, as an indication to young women of the stumbling-blocks in the life in which they will be placed. Let us continue:

"They were all love, lovers, sweet-hearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions killed at every stage, horses ridden to death on every page, sombre forests, heartaches, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, 'gentlemen' brave as lions, gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed, and weeping like fountains. For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries. With Walter Scott, later, she fell in love with historical events, dreamed of old chests, guardrooms and minstrels. She would have liked to live in some old manor-house, like those long-waisted chatelaines who, in the shade of pointed arches, spent their days leaning on the stone, chin in hand, watching a cavalier with white plume galloping on his black horse from the distant fields. At this time, she had a cult for Mary Stuart and enthusiastic veneration for ill.u.s.trious or unhappy women. Joan of Arc, Helose, Agnes Sorel, the beautiful Ferronniere, and Clemence Isaure stood out to her like comets in the dark immensity of heaven, where also were seen, lost in shadow, and all unconnected, St. Louis with his oak, the dying Bayard, some cruelties of Louis XI., a little of St. Bartholomew's, the plume of the Bearnais, and always the remembrance of the plates painted in honor of Louis XIV.

"In the music-cla.s.s, in the ballads she sang, there was nothing but little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagunes, gondoliers;--mild compositions that allowed her to catch a glimpse athwart the obscurity of style and the weakness of the music of the attractive phantasmagoria of sentimental realities."

Now, you have not remembered this, when that poor country girl, having returned to the farm and married a village physician, is invited to an evening party at the Castle, to which you have sought to call the attention of the judges to show that there was something lascivious in a waltz she took part in. You have not called to mind this education when this poor woman is charmed that an invitation comes to take her from her husband's common fireside and lead her to the Castle, where she sees fine gentlemen, beautiful ladies, and the old duke, who, they said, had had great fortune at Court! The Government Attorney has shown some fine emotions _a propos_ of Queen Marie-Antoinette! a.s.suredly there is not one of us who would not share his thought; like him, we have trembled at the name of this victim of the Revolution, but it is not with Marie-Antoinette that we are concerned here, it is with the Castle Vaubyessard.

There was an old duke there who had had, they said, relations with the queen, and towards whom all eyes were turned. And when this young woman found herself thus transported into the midst of the world, thus realizing all the fantastic dreams of her youth, can you wonder at the intoxication of it? And you accuse her of being lascivious! Better accuse the waltz itself; that dance of our great modern b.a.l.l.s where, said a late author writing about it, the woman "leans her head upon the shoulder of her partner whose limbs embrace her." You find Madame Bovary lascivious in Flaubert's description, but there is not a man, and I will not except you, who, having taken part in a ball like that and seen that sort of waltz, has not had in mind the wish that his wife or his daughter refrain from this pleasure which has in it so much of the untamed. If, counting upon the chast.i.ty which enveloped this young woman, we allow her sometimes to give herself up to this pleasure which the world sanctions, it is necessary to count very much upon that envelope of chast.i.ty and, however much one may count upon it, it is not unheard of to express the impressions which M. Flaubert has expressed in the name of morals and chast.i.ty.

Here she is at the Castle Vaubyessard, observed by the old duke, noticed favorably by all, and you cry out: What details! What does it mean?

Details are everywhere, although we cite but a single pa.s.sage.

"Madame Bovary noticed that many ladies had not put their gloves in their gla.s.ses.

"But at the upper end of the table, alone among all those women, bent over his full plate, with his napkin tied round his neck like a child, an old man sat eating, letting drops of gravy drip from his mouth. His eyes were bloodshot, and he wore a little queue tied with a black ribbon. He was the Marquis's father-in-law, the old Duke de Laverdiere, once on a time favorite of the Count d'Artois, in the days of the Vaudreuil hunting-parties at the Marquis de Conflans', and had been, it was said, the lover of Queen Mari-Antoinette between Monsieur de Coigny and Monsieur de Lauzun."

Defend the queen, defend her especially before the scaffold, say that because of her t.i.tle she had the right of respect, but suppress your accusations when one contents himself with saying that he had been, it was said, the lover of the queen. Can that be so serious that you reproach us with having insulted the memory of that unfortunate woman?

"He had lived a life of noisy debauch, full of duels, bets, elopements; he had squandered his fortune and frightened all his family. A servant behind his chair named aloud to him in his ear the dishes that he pointed to, stammering, and constantly Emma's eyes turned involuntarily to this old man with hanging lips, as to something extraordinary. He had lived at court and slept in the bed of queens!

"Iced champagne was poured out. Emma s.h.i.+vered all over as she felt it cold in her mouth. She had never seen pomegranates nor tasted pine-apples."

You see that these descriptions are charming, incontestably, and that it is not difficult to take a line here and there for the purpose of creating a kind of colour, against which my conscience protests. It is not a lascivious colour, it is only lifelike; it is the literary element and at the same time the moral element.

Here we have a young girl, whose education you are acquainted with, become a woman. The Government Attorney has asked: Did she even try to love her husband? He has not read the book; if he had read it, he would not have made the objection.

We have, gentlemen, this poor woman dreaming at first. On page 34 you will find her dreams. And there is something more here, something of which the Government Attorney did not speak, and which I must tell you, and these are her impressions when her mother died; you will see if they are lascivious soon enough! Have the goodness to turn to page 33 and follow me:

"When her mother died she cried much the first few days. She had a funeral picture made with the hair of the deceased, and, in a letter sent to the Bertaux full of sad reflections on life, she asked to be buried some day in the same grave. The good man thought she must be ill, and came to see her. Emma was secretly pleased that she had reached at a first attempt the rare ideal of pale lives, never attained by mediocre hearts. She let herself glide along with Lamartine meanderings, listened to harps on lakes, to all the songs of dying swans, to the falling of the leaves, the pure virgins ascending to heaven, and the voice of the Eternal discoursing down the valleys. She wearied of it, would not confess it, continued from habit, and at last was surprised to feel herself soothed, and with no more sadness at heart than wrinkles on her brow."

I wish to make answer to the Government Attorney's reproach that she made no effort to love her husband.

THE GOVERNMENT ATTORNEY:

I did not reproach her for that, I said that she did not succeed in loving him.

M. SENARD:

If I have been mistaken, if you made no reproach, that is the best response that could be given. I believed that I understood you to make one; let us see how I may be deceived. Moreover, here is what I read at the end of page 36:

"And yet, in accord with theories she believed right, she desired to make herself in love with him. By moonlight in the garden she recited all the pa.s.sionate rhymes she knew by heart, and, sighing, sang to him many melancholy adagios; but she found herself as calm after this as before, and Charles seemed no more amorous and no more moved.

"When she had thus for a while struck the flint on her heart without getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of understanding what she did not experience as of believing anything that did not present itself in conventional forms, she persuaded herself without difficulty that Charles's pa.s.sion was nothing very exorbitant. His outbursts became regular; he embraced her at certain fixed times. It was one habit among other habits, and, like a dessert, looked forward to after the monotony of dinner."

On page 37 we find a group of similar things. Now, here is where the peril begins. You know how she has been brought up; and I beg you not to forget this for an instant.

There is not a man who, having read this, would not say that M. Flaubert is not only a great artist but a man of heart, for having in the last six pages turned all the horror and scorn upon the woman and all the interest towards the husband. He is a great artist, as has been said, because he has left the husband as he was, he has not transformed him, and to the end he is the same good man, commonplace, mediocre, full of the duties of his profession, loving his wife well, but dest.i.tute of education or elevation of thought. He is the same at the death-bed of his wife. And nevertheless, there is not an individual to whom the memory returns with more interest.

Why? Because he has kept to the end his simplicity and uprightness of heart; because to the end he has fulfilled his duty while his wife was led astray. His death is as beautiful and as touching as the death of his wife is hideous. On the dead body of the woman the author has shown the spots made by the vomiting of poison; they soil the white shroud in which she goes to her burial, and he has made her, as he desired, an object of disgust; but there is a man there who is sublime--the husband standing beside the grave. There is a man who is grand, sublime, whose death is admirable--the husband, who, finding himself broken-hearted by the death of his wife, sees afterwards all the illusions of the heart that remained to him embraced in the thought of his wife in the tomb.

Keep that, I beg you, in your remembrance. The author has gone beyond what was necessary--as Lamartine has said--in rendering the death of the woman hideous and her punishment most terrible. The author has concentrated all the interest upon the man who did not deviate from the line of duty, who preserved his mediocre character, to be sure (for the author could not change his character) but who preserved also all his generosity of heart, while upon the wife who deceived him, ruined him, gave him into the hands of usurers, put into circulation forged notes and finally arrived at suicide, was heaped all the acc.u.mulated horrors. We shall see that it is natural--the death of this woman who, if she had not come to her end by poison, would have been broken by the excess of misfortune with which she was surrounded. The author has seen this. His book would not be read if he had done otherwise, if, in order to show where an education as perilous as that of Madame Bovary can lead, he had not been prodigal with the fascinating images and the powerful tableaux for which he is reproached.

M. Flaubert constantly sets forth the superiority of the husband over the wife, and what superiority, if you please? that of simple duty fulfilled, while the wife was straying from hers. Here she is, fixed by the bent of this bad education; here she is, gone out after the scene of the ball, with the young boy, Leon, as inexperienced as herself. She coquets with him but does not dare to go further; nothing happens. Then comes Rodolphe who takes the woman to himself. After looking at her for a moment, he said: This woman is all right. She will be easy prey, because she is light-minded and inexperienced. As to the fall, will you re-read pages 42, 43 and 44. I have only a word to say about this scene and that is: there are no details, no descriptions, no image that can trouble the senses; a single word indicates the fall: "She abandoned herself." I pray you to have the goodness to read again the details of the fall of Clarissa Harlowe, which I have not heard decried as a bad book. M. Flaubert has subst.i.tuted Rodolphe for Lovelace, and Emma for Clarissa. If you will compare the two authors and the two books you will appreciate the situation.

But I will return here to the indignation of the Government Attorney.

He is shocked that remorse does not immediately follow the fall, and that in the place of expressing bitterness, she said with satisfaction: "I have a lover!" But the author would not be true, if he made the enchanting draught seem bitter while it still touched the lips. He who wrote as the Attorney understands might be moral, but he would be saying what is not in nature. No, it is not at the first moment of a fault that the sentiment of fault is awakened; otherwise, it would not be committed. No, it is not at the moment when she is under a delusion that intoxicates her that a woman can be averted from this intoxication even by the immensity of the fault she has committed. She feels only the intoxication; she goes back to her home happy, sparkling, and singing in her heart: "I have a lover!" But can this last long? You have read pages 424 and 425. On both pages, and if you please, to page 428, the sentiment of disgust with her lover is not yet manifest; but she is already under the impression of fear and uneasiness. She thinks, weighs the question, and believes that she does not wish to abandon Rodolphe:

"Something stronger than herself forced her to him; so much so, that one day, seeing her come unexpectedly he frowned as one put out.

"'What is the matter with you?' she said, 'Are you ill? Tell me!'

"At last he declared with a serious air that her visits were becoming imprudent--that she was compromising herself.

"Gradually Rodolphe's fears took possession of her. At first, love had intoxicated her, and she had thought of nothing beyond. But now that he was indispensable to her life, she feared to lose anything of this, or even that it should be disturbed. When she came back from his house, she looked all about her, anxiously watching every form that pa.s.sed in the horizon, and every village window from which she could be seen. She listened for steps, cries, the noise of the ploughs, and she stopped short, white, and trembling more than the aspen leaves swaying overhead."