"Ah! What, then, is easier than making of our passions an insupportable pain or sin, when, if we cut out, as is very just, the little sweetness through which they lead us, there is left of them only the cruel disquiet and bitterness with which they abound? Our sins are against us, our sins are upon us, our sins are in the midst of us; like an arrow piercing our body, an insupportable weight upon our head, a poison devouring our entrails."
Is not all that you have just listened to designed to show you the bitterness of passion? I leave you this book, lined and thumb-marked by the studious man who has found his thought there. And that man, who has been inspired from a source of this kind, who has written of adultery in the terms you have listened to, is prosecuted for outrage of public and religious morals!
A few lines still upon the woman sinner, and you will see how M. Flaubert, having decided to paint this ardour, understood taking inspiration from this model:
"But, punished for our error, without being deceived by it, we seek in change the remedy for our scorn; we wander from object to object, and if, finally there is some one who holds us, it is not because we are content with our choice, but because we are bound by our inconstancy."
* * * * *
"All appeared to her empty, false, disgusting in these creatures: far from finding there those first charms which her heart had had so much difficulty in defending, she saw in them now only frivolity, danger and vanity."
* * * * *
"I will not speak of an entanglement of passion; what fears there are that the mystery of it cannot dispel! what measures to keep on the side of well-being and pride! what eyes to shun! what watchers to deceive! what returns to fear from those whom one chooses for their aids and confidants in their passion! what indignities to suffer from him, perhaps, for whom one has sacrificed honour and liberty, and of whom one dare not complain! To all this, add those cruel moments when passion, less lively, leaves us to choose between falling back upon ourselves and feeling all the humility of our position, and those moments where the heart, born for more solid pleasures, leaves us with our own idols and finds its punishment in its own disgust and inconstancy. Profane world! if there is in you that felicity that is so much vaunted, favor your adorers with it nor punish them for the faith they have added so lightly to your promises."
Let me say to you here: when a man in the silence of the night, meditates upon the causes of enticement for woman, when he finds them in her education and, putting aside personal observation, for the sake of expressing his thoughts, matures them at the sources I have indicated, not allowing himself to use his pen except from inspiration of Bossuet and Massillon, permit me to ask you if there is a word to express my surprise, my grief, on seeing this man dragged into Court—on account of some passages in his book, and precisely for the truest and most elevated ideas that he was able to bring together! And I pray you not to forget this in relation to the charge of outrage against religious morals! And then, if you will permit me, I will put in opposition to all this, under your very eyes, what I myself call attacking the moral, that is to say, satisfaction of the senses without bitterness, without those large drops of cold sweat which fall from the brow of those who give themselves over to it; and I will not quote to you from licentious books in which the authors have sought to arouse the senses; I will quote from only one book—which is given as a prize in colleges, but whose author's name I ask leave to withhold until after I have read you a passage from it. Here is the passage: I will ask you to pass the volume. It is a copy that was given to a college student as a prize. I prefer you to take this copy rather than M. Flaubert's:
"The next day I was received into her apartment. There I felt all that voluptuousness carries with it. The room was filled with the most agreeable perfumes. She lay upon a bed which was enclosed in garlands of flowers. She appeared to be lying there languishingly. She extended her hand to me and made me sit beside her. In all, even in the veil which covered her face, there was a charm. I could see the form of her beautiful body. A simple cloth which moved as she moved allowed me at one time to see, and at another to lose sight of, her ravishing beauty."