ked to repeat it to me. Lamartine proved to him that he had read each
number, proving it most graciously by repeating entire pages from
them. Lamartine only added:

"While I have read even to the last page without reserve, I did blame
the last pages. You have hurt me, you have literally made me suffer! The
punishment is beyond all proportion to the crime; you have created a
pitiably frightful death! Assuredly the woman who defiles the marriage
bed should expect punishment, but this is horrible; it is a punishment
such as I have never seen. You have gone too far; you have done mischief
to my nerves. That power of description which you have applied to the
last moment of death has left upon me an indelible suffering!"

And when Gustave Flaubert said to him:

"But, Monsieur de Lamartine, do you know that I have been indicted and
summoned to a court of correction for an offense against public morals
and religion for having made a book like that?"

Lamartine answered:

"I believe that I have been all my life a man who, in literary works as
well as others, comprehends fully what makes for public and religious
morals; my dear child, it is not possible to find in France a tribunal
that will convict you."

This is what passed between Lamartine and Flaubert yesterday, and I have
the right to say to you that this approval is among those which are
worthy to be well weighed.

This well understood, let us see how my conscience could tell me that
_Madame Bovary_ was a good book, a good deed. And I ask your permission
to add that I do not take to these things easily, this facility is not
my habit. Some literary works I take up which, although emanating from
our great writers, do not remain two minutes before my eyes. I will pass
to you in the council chamber some lines that I took no delight in
reading, and I will ask your permission to say to you that when I came
to the end of M. Flaubert's work, I was convinced that a cutting made by
the _Revue de Paris_ was the cause of all this. I shall ask you further
to add my appreciation to this highest and most distinguished
appreciation which I am about to mention.

Here, gentlemen, is a portfolio filled with the opinions of all the
literary men of our time upon the work with which we are engaged, among
whom are some of the most distinguished, expressing their astonishment
upon reading this new work, at once so moral and so useful!

Now, how has it come about that a work like this ca