book; he affirms before you that the thought in his book, from
the first line to the last, is a moral thought; and that, if it were not
perverted (and you have seen during the last hour how great a talent one
may have for perverting a thought) it would be (and will become again
presently) for you, as it has been already for the readers of the book,
an eminently moral and religious thought capable of being translated
into these words: the excitation of virtue through the horror of vice.

I bring M. Gustave Flaubert's affirmation here to you, and I put it
fearlessly in the light of the prosecuting attorney's speech, for this
affirmation is grave; and it is through the personality of its maker,
through the circumstances which have led to the writing of the book,
that I am going to make it understood to you.

The affirmation is grave on account of the personality that makes it:
and, permit me to say to you that M. Gustave Flaubert is not to me an
unknown man who has instructions to give me, and who has need of
recommendations from me--I speak not only of his morality but of his
position. I come here, into this precinct, fulfilling a duty of
conscience after reading the book, after feeling myself exalted, by this
reading, in all that is honest and profoundly religious. But, at the
same time that I come fulfilling a duty of conscience, I come to fulfill
a duty of friendship. I remember, and I can never forget, that his
father was an old friend of mine. His father, by whose friendship I was
long honoured, to the last day of his life, his father,--permit me to
say his illustrious father,--was for thirty years surgeon-in-chief at
the hospital at Rouen. He was in charge of the Dupuytren dissecting
room, and in giving to science great instruction, he has endowed it with
some great names; I will mention but one, that of Cloquet. He has not
only left for himself a good name in science, he has left a grand
memento in his immense service to humanity. And at the same time I am
recalling my bond of friendship with him, I wish to tell you that his
son, who has been dragged into Court for an outrage against morals and
religion, this son is the friend of my children, as I was the friend of
his father. I know his thought, I know his intentions, and the
counsellor has the right here of placing himself as a personal guaranty
of his client.

Gentlemen, a great name and great memories have obligations. Children
were not wanting to M. Flaubert