outrage in this! But M. Flaubert has only done what Shakespeare and
Goethe have done, who, at the supreme moment of death, have not failed
to make heard some chant, or perhaps plaint, or it might be raillery,
which recalls to him who is passing to eternity some pleasure which he
will never more enjoy, or some fault to be atoned. Let us read:

"In fact, she looked around her slowly, as one awakening from a dream;
then in a distinct voice she asked for her looking-glass, and remained
some time bending over it, until the big tears fell from her eyes. Then
she turned away her head with a sigh and fell back upon the pillows."

I could not read it, I am like Lamartine: "The punishment seems to me to
go beyond truth...." I should not consider that I was doing a bad deed,
Mr. Attorney, in reading these pages to my married daughters, honest
girls who have had a good example and good teaching, and who would
never, never go away from the straight path for indiscretion, or away
from things that could and ought to be understood.... It is impossible
for me to continue this reading and I shall hold myself rigorously to
the condemned passages:

"As the death-rattle became stronger [Charles was by her side, the man
whom you did not see but who is admirable] the priest prayed faster; his
prayers mingled with Bovary's stifled sobs, and sometimes all seemed
lost in the muffled murmur of the Latin syllables that tolled like a
passing bell.

"Suddenly on the pavement was heard a loud noise of clogs, and the
clattering of a stick; and a voice, a raucous voice, sang:

"'Maids in the warmth of a summer day,
Dream of love and of love alway;
The wind is strong this summer day,
Her petticoat is blown away.'"

Emma raised herself like a galvanized corpse, her hair undone, her eyes
fixed, staring.

"Where the sickle blades have been,
Nannette, gathering ears of corn,
Passes bending down, my queen,
To the earth where they were born."

"'The blind man!" she cries.

"And Emma began to laugh, an atrocious, frantic, despairing laugh,
thinking she saw the hideous face of the poor wretch that stood out
against the eternal night like a menace.

"She fell back upon the mattress in a convulsion. They all drew
near. She was dead."

You see, gentlemen, in this supreme moment, a recalling of her sin, and
with it remorse and all that goes with it of poignancy and fear. It is
not alone the whim of an artist wishing only to make a contrast with