the third, the fall with Leon, which is the second adultery, and finally
the fourth, the death of Madame Bovary.

Before raising the curtain on these four pictures, permit me to inquire
what colour, what stroke of the brush M. Flaubert employs--for this
romance is a picture, and it is necessary to know to what school he
belongs--what colour he uses and what sort of portrait he makes of his
heroine.

The general colour of the author, allow me to tell you, is a lascivious
colour, before, during, and after the falls! When she is a child ten or
twelve years of age, she is at the Ursuline convent. At this age, when
the young girl is not formed, when the woman cannot feel those emotions
which reveal to her a new world, she goes to confession:

"When she went to confession, she invented little sins in order that she
might stay there longer, kneeling in the shadow, her hands joined, her
face against the grating beneath the whispering of the priest. The
comparisons of betrothed, husband, celestial lover, and eternal
marriage, that recur in sermons, stirred within her soul depths of
unexpected sweetness."

Is it natural for a little girl to invent small sins, since we know that
for a child the smallest sins are confessed with the greatest
difficulty? And again, at this age, when a little girl is not formed,
does it not make what I have called a lascivious picture to show her
inventing little sins in the shadow, under the whisperings of the
priest, recalling comparisons she has heard about the affianced, the
celestial lover and eternal marriage which gave her a shiver of
voluptuousness?

Would you see Madame Bovary in her lesser acts, in a free state, without
a lover and without sin? I pass over those words, "the next day," and
that bride who left nothing to be discovered which could be divined or
found out, as the phrase in itself is more than equivocal; but we shall
see how it was with the husband:

The husband of the next day, "whom one would have taken for an old
maid," the bridegroom of this bride who "left nothing to be discovered
that could be divined," arose and went out, "his heart full of the
felicities of the night, with mind tranquil and flesh content," going
about "ruminating upon his happiness like one who is still enjoying
after dinner the taste of the truffles he is digesting."

It now remains, gentlemen, to determine upon the literary stamp of M.
Flaubert and upon the strokes of his brush. Now, at the Ca