shameful death, commits an
outrage against public morals!

Now, I do not wish to say it is not your opinion that you have
expressed, since you have expressed it, but you have yielded to a
prejudice. No, it cannot be you, the husband, the father of a family,
the man who is there, it is not you, that is not possible; without the
prejudice of the speech of the prosecution and a preconceived idea, you
would never say that M. Flaubert was the author of a bad book! Surely,
left to your inspirations, your appreciation would be the same as
mine. I do not speak from a literary point of view; but from a moral and
religious standard, as you understand it and I understand it, you and I
could not differ.

They have said, furthermore, that we have brought upon the scene a
materialistic curate. We took the curate as we took the husband. He is
not an eminent ecclesiastic, but an ordinary priest, a country
curate. And as we have insulted no one, expressed no thought or
sentiment that could be injurious to a husband, so we have insulted no
ecclesiastic. I have only a word to say beyond this. Do you wish to
read books in which ecclesiastics play a deplorable role? Take _Gil
Blas_, _The Canon_ (of Balzac), _Notre-Dame de Paris_ of Victor Hugo. If
you wish to read of priests who are the shame of the clergy, seek them
elsewhere, for you will not find them in _Madame Bovary_. What have we
shown? A country curate, who in his function of country curate is, like
M. Bovary, an ordinary man. Have I represented him as a gourmand, a
libertine, or a drunkard? I have not said a word of that kind. I have
represented him fulfilling his ministry, not with elevated intelligence,
but as his nature allowed him to fulfill it. I have put in contact with
him, and in an almost continual state of discussion, a type which
lives--as the creatures of M. Prudhomme live--as all other creations of
our time will live who are taken from truth and which it is not possible
for one to forget, and that is the country pharmacist, the Voltairean,
the sceptic, the incredulous man, who is in a perpetual quarrel with the
curate. But in these quarrels, who is it that is beaten, buffeted, and
ridiculed? It is Homais; to him is the most comic role given, because he
is the most true, because he best paints our sceptical epoch, a fury
whom we call a priest-hater. Permit me still to read to you page 206. It
is the good woman of the inn who offers something to her curate:

"'What c