for which she was not made, unhappy in her modest
condition where she was placed by fate, forgetting first her duties as a
mother, afterward lacking in her duties as a wife, introducing
successively into her house adultery and ruin, and ending miserably by
suicide, after passing through all degrees of the most complete
degradation, having even descended to theft;

"_Be it known_, that this data, moral without doubt in principle, must
be completed in its development by a certain severity of language and by
a reserve directed especially towards that which touches the exposition
of the pictures and situations which the author has employed in placing
it before the eyes of the public;

"_Be it known_, that it is not allowed, under pretext of painting
character or local colour, to reproduce the facts, words, and gestures
of the digressions of the personages which a writer gives himself the
mission to paint; that a like system, applied to works of the mind as
well as to productions of the fine arts, would lead to a realism which
would be the reverse of the beautiful and the good, and which, bringing
forth works equally offensive to the eye and to the mind, would commit a
continual outrage against public morals and good manners;

"_Be it known_, that there are limits which literature, even the
lightest, should not pass, and of which Gustave Flaubert and the
co-indicted have not taken sufficient account;

"_Be it known_, that the work of which Flaubert is the author, is a work
which appears to be long and seriously elaborated, from a literary point
of view and as a study of character; that the passages coming under the
ordinance for dismissal, as reprehensible as they may be, are few in
number as compared with the extent of the work; that these passages,
either in the ideas they expose, or in the situations they represent,
bring out as a whole the characters which the author wished to paint,
although exaggerated and impregnated with a vulgar realism often
shocking;

"_Be it known_, that Gustave Flaubert affirms his respect for good
manners, and all that attaches itself to religious morals; that it does
not appear that his book has been written like certain other books, with
the sole aim of giving satisfaction to the sensual passions, to a spirit
of license and debauch, or of ridiculing things which should be held in
the respect of all;

"That he has done wrong only in losing sight of the rules which every
writer who respe